Average Rent In Toronto Has Reached Over 3K & Many People Are Joking About Giving Up Food

"Just work two jobs, ya peasants."

View of waterfront high-rise towers in Toronto.

View of waterfront high-rise towers in Toronto.

Associate Editor

Toronto rent prices are going through the roof! The average rent for purpose-built apartments just skyrocketed to over $3,000 — a record-breaking feat that's never been seen before in the area.

Urbanation, a real estate insights website, has been keeping tabs on the situation and found that rent prices have been climbing for six straight quarters with double-digit year-over-year increases. In other words, it's getting pricey out there.

Many people on Reddit and TikTok were quick to respond to the jaw-dropping new rate, and some started joking about giving up food.

"Just work two jobs, ya peasants and never buy food. It's so easy," one person on Reddit wrote on a thread discussing the subject.

"If you eat in your dreams, it's almost like real food!" another person wrote.

Purpose-built apartments are housing units specifically designed for "long-term rental accommodation," according to the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), and they made up 14% of all the homes in the GTA in October 2021.

In the first quarter of the year, Urbanation found that condo rents jumped a whopping 13.6% year over year to an average of $2,741.

As tenants scramble to find affordable living spaces, the trend seems to be moving towards downsizing, the research found.

One TikToker decided to see how much a Torontonian would be left with at the end of the month, based on their average salary and new rent price, finding that it could leave most people with a monthly deficit of roughly $236.

@lenderbidding

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But some people took issue with his estimates for food costs in Toronto.

"$350 on food must be only rice 😂," one person wrote. "360 for food!!!! I spend that in a week," another wrote.

Many others expressed despair at how unaffordable housing in Toronto has become.

"It is physically impossible to live by yourself in Toronto. It’s either a romantic partner, roommates or your parents," one person on TikTok commented.

"Honestly, I don’t know where the city is going with this. What the game plan is. Drive everyone out? Make Toronto the new Dubai or Vegas? I don’t understand this at all," a person on Reddit commented.

  • Associate Editor

    Rhythm Sachdeva (she/her) was a Toronto-based Associate Editor at Narcity Media. She has previously reported for CTV News, The Canadian Press, the Toronto Star and the Times of India, where she published several A1 features and breaking news stories for national audiences. Rhythm graduated from the University of Toronto with an honours bachelor of arts degree in journalism and also holds a graduate certificate in contemporary journalism from Centennial College. At university, she was the managing editor of her campus magazine, The Underground. She's passionate about writing about the diverse immigrant community in Toronto and is always on the hunt for unique human interest stories.

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