What Actually Happened to Rents
Rentals.ca released its September report on the 9th. Nationally, average asking rents fell 4.8 per cent year over year. That's the twenty-third consecutive month of decline.Twenty-three months. Nearly two years of falling rents, and it's barely registered in how people talk about buying property.In British Columbia, the average asking rent across all property types was $2,387 in August, down 4.7 per cent from a year earlier and essentially flat from July. The declines were steepest at the small end, which is exactly where suites live:- Studios down 8 per cent, to $1,834
- One-bedrooms down 6 per cent, to $2,048
- Shared accommodation down 4.5 per cent, to $909
- Purpose-built apartments and condos down 4.6 per cent
Why It's Happening
Three things, and none of them look like reversing quickly.A lot of new rental supply arrived. BC recorded record purpose-built rental completions in 2025, around 21,000 units, a 56 per cent increase over 2024. That's a genuine change in the amount of competing product.Population growth slowed. Federal immigration policy changes have cooled the rate at which new renters arrive, and economists have pointed to that as a contributor to the broader BC housing slowdown, not just on the rental side.Youth unemployment is higher. Fewer young people forming new households means fewer people competing for the one-bedroom at the bottom of your stairs.Rentals.ca cited all three in its analysis.One Important Nuance
Here's where I want to be careful, because the headlines oversimplify this.These are asking rents. They reflect what landlords are advertising vacant units for, not what existing tenants are paying. Those are different numbers, and the gap matters.If you have a tenant who has been in place for four years, their rent is governed by the annual allowable increase, not by the market. Overall rents paid across BC have still been rising, even while asking rents fall. Renters who need to move often face higher costs than they were paying.So this isn't a story about rents collapsing. It's a story about the top of the market softening — the price at which you can fill a vacant unit today.Which, if you're buying a house and planning to rent out the suite, is precisely the number that applies to you.The Cap Matters Too
The other half of the equation is how fast that income can grow once you've got a tenant.BC set the 2027 maximum allowable rent increase at 2.2 per cent, tied to inflation. That's the seventh consecutive year the cap has been at or below inflation.So if you're modelling suite income over a ten-year hold, you can't assume it climbs with the market. It climbs with the cap, which is roughly inflation, unless the unit turns over. That's a meaningfully different projection than the one most people have in their heads.What This Means If You're Buying
Not that suites are a bad idea. They're not. It means underwrite them honestly.Use today's rent, not 2023's. Search current listings in the actual community where the property is. Not Victoria, not Nanaimo, the specific town. What's a one-bedroom suite in Duncan actually advertised at this month? That's your number.Assume a vacancy allowance. Nobody rents a suite 365 days a year forever. Turnover happens, and it takes longer to fill a unit in a softening market than a tight one.Underwrite the purchase without the suite, then treat the income as upside. This is the single most useful discipline I can suggest. If the mortgage only works with a tenant in place, you've taken on someone else's employment situation as a condition of keeping your house. If it works without and the suite improves it, you've bought yourself room.Talk to a broker about how they'll treat the income. Lenders apply their own rules to rental income — how much of it they'll count, what documentation they want, whether the suite needs to be legal and permitted. Those rules vary by lender and they're stricter than most buyers expect. Find out before you're relying on it.Confirm the suite is actually legal. A suite that isn't permitted may not count toward your financing at all, and it carries its own risks around insurance and enforcement. I've written about suite legality here before and it comes up constantly.What This Means If You're Selling
If your listing leads with suite income, the number in the marketing should be defensible.Advertising "$1,600/month mortgage helper" when comparable units in town are currently advertised at $1,250 doesn't make the house more attractive. It gives an informed buyer a reason to question everything else in the listing, and buyers right now are informed and patient.Better approach: state what the suite actually rented for and when, or what comparable units are currently listed at. Specific and verifiable beats optimistic.What This Doesn't Mean
Suites are still worth having. A legal suite widens your buyer pool, helps with financing, and gives you flexibility — family, aging parents, adult kids who can't afford to move out yet. That value doesn't disappear because asking rents softened 5 per cent.And this is a cycle, not a permanent state. Supply surges end. Population policy changes again. Nothing in the data says rents fall forever. What the data says is that the assumption of automatic annual rent growth, which held for most of the last decade, hasn't held for nearly two years.Plan on the numbers in front of you, and let it be a nice surprise if they improve.My Honest Take
This is the part of the market where I see people get into trouble, and it's rarely dramatic. It's a buyer who stretched by fifty thousand because the suite covered it, and then the suite sat empty for three months, or rented for two hundred less than the plan assumed.That's survivable if you had room. It's not if you didn't.The suite should be the thing that makes a good purchase better. Not the thing that makes a marginal purchase possible.Looking at a property with a suite and want a straight read on what it would actually rent for? That's a conversation I'm happy to have before you write an offer rather than after. Call or text 250-709-8708, or email jack@pioneer-realestate.ca.General information for Cowichan Valley buyers and sellers as of mid-September 2026, not financial advice. Rental figures from Rentals.ca and Urbanation, and the Province of BC. Rental market conditions change; confirm current local rents and lender policies before relying on them.