While it may not feel like it, rent prices are down in Montreal.
Anyone who’s gone apartment hunting recently knows the sticker shock hasn’t fully gone away, but according to liv.rent’s August 2026 Montreal rent report, the numbers are more encouraging than they were a year ago.
Across the island, the average unfurnished one-bedroom now asks for $1,605 a month, up slightly from July but still $88 less than what renters were paying is August of 2025, a 5.2% year-over-year drop.
And when you break the city down neighbourhood by neighbourhood, the picture gets even more interesting. Nine of Montreal’s ten tracked neighbourhoods saw unfurnished one-bedroom rents fall compared to a year ago, and one of them dropped far enough to earn a new title entirely.
Villeray-Parc-Extension takes the top (or bottom) spot
Villeray-Parc-Extension posted the steepest year-over-year decline of any Montreal neighbourhood, with unfurnished one-bedroom rents falling 13.8%, from $1,587 in August 2025 down to $1,368 this year.
That drop is enough to make it the most affordable neighbourhood in Montreal this month, edging out every other area the report tracks.
For comparison, Downtown remains the priciest place to rent in the city, with unfurnished one-bedrooms averaging $1,819 a month, a gap of $451 between the two neighbourhoods.
Almost everywhere got cheaper, except one spot
Villeray-Parc-Extension’s drop wasn’t an isolated case. Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Saint-Laurent, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce/Côte-des-Neiges, Verdun, Westmount, Saint-Henri, Downtown, and Le Plateau-Mont-Royal all recorded year-over-year declines too, ranging anywhere from a modest 1.4% dip in Ahuntsic-Cartierville up to that 13.8% drop in Villeray-Parc-Extension. Across those nine neighbourhoods, rents fell by an average of roughly 5.7%.
Hochelaga-Maisonneuve was the lone exception, actually climbing 1.3% year-over-year to $1,419.
What’s happening month over month
Although Montreal’s average unfurnished one-bedroom rent rose by 1.2% from July to August, landing at $1,605, furnished one-bedrooms moved the opposite way, easing 0.8% to $1,610. That means furnished units now only cost about $5 more per month than unfurnished ones on average.
At the neighbourhood level, Westmount saw the biggest monthly jump for unfurnished units, up 4.7%, followed by Villeray-Parc-Extension at 4.1%, showing that even the city’s newly crowned cheapest neighbourhood isn’t moving in a straight line downward. Ahuntsic-Cartierville posted the sharpest monthly drop, down 3.4%, with Hochelaga-Maisonneuve easing slightly by 0.2%.
For furnished units, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce/Côte-des-Neiges saw the largest monthly increase at 5.2%, while Le Plateau-Mont-Royal dropped the most, down 7.9%.
For a full neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood breakdown, liv.rent’s complete August report is available here.
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