Burnaby Neighbourhoods, Compared for Renters

Burnaby's three CMHC survey zones sit about $250 apart on a one-bedroom: Southeast Burnaby around Edmonds at $1,564, North Burnaby at $1,710, Central Park/Metrotown at $1,813. Every other decision here — tower or walk-up, train or bus, mountain view or parking lot — happens inside that spread, which is narrower than most people expect.

Rents and vacancy come from CMHC's Rental Market Survey for October 2025, published 11 December 2025; tenancy rules are as they stood on 9 August 2026. CMHC's zones are not neighbourhoods: "North Burnaby" bundles Brentwood, Burnaby Heights, Capitol Hill, Willingdon Heights and SFU into one number, and there is no Lougheed zone at all. Use them to rank areas against each other, not to predict your own cheque — the same caveat as our Vancouver neighbourhoods comparison, the other half of this.

Three ride times are measured: Metrotown 19 minutes, Edmonds 24, Brentwood 17, each the median scheduled in-vehicle time for weekday departures between 07:15 and 08:45. The rest are marked "about" and estimated by counting stations against those three, because TransLink publishes no time for every station pair. None include walking or waiting.

The numbers, with sources

Figure	Value	Source
Avg. 1-bed, Central Park/Metrotown zone	$1,813	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Avg. 1-bed, North Burnaby zone	$1,710	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Avg. 1-bed, Southeast Burnaby zone	$1,564	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Avg. 1-bed, Vancouver CMA	$1,807	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Purpose-built stock built before 1980 — Metrotown / SE Burnaby / North Burnaby	86% / 88% / 78%	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Vacancy, Vancouver CMA (all purpose-built)	3.7%	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Vacancy, North Burnaby / SE Burnaby	5.6% / 3.6%, both flagged poor reliability	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Rented-condo vacancy, Metro Vancouver	1.5%	CMHC RMS, Oct 2025
Completed buildings over 100 m tall in Burnaby	57, of which 17 exceed 150 m	List of tallest buildings in Burnaby, 2026
Maximum rent increase, existing tenancy, 2026	2.3%, once per 12 months, 3 months' notice	Residential Tenancy Branch
Ground for a demolition or conversion notice	Good-faith intent to demolish or convert	s. 49(6)
Effective date of that notice	At least 4 months after the tenant receives it	s. 49(2)
Compensation for that notice	One month's rent	s. 51(1)
Renovations	No notice — landlord must first obtain an order from the director	s. 49.2
Penalty if the stated purpose never happens	12 months' rent	s. 51(2), s. 51.4(4)

Metrotown being the priciest zone while holding the oldest stock looks wrong until you remember what CMHC counts. Purpose-built rental there is largely 1960s and 1970s walk-ups on Kingsway, which is why the zone still has cheap units. The glass towers in a listings search are mostly rented condos, surveyed separately, at 1.5% vacancy region-wide. Two markets, one postcode.

The four town centres

Metrotown

The densest place in the region outside downtown Vancouver, and the one with the most rental turnover. Expo Line at Metrotown, 19 minutes to Waterfront at morning peak with no transfer. Metropolis at Metrotown is the largest mall in B.C., Crystal Mall across Kingsway has the Chinese supermarket, and Central Park — 90 hectares of forest on the Vancouver boundary — is why the place is more liveable than its density suggests.

Housing splits hard. South of Kingsway, wood-frame walk-ups from the sixties and seventies with baseboard heat and coin laundry. North and east, concrete towers, mostly stratas rented out by individual owners. The walk-up is usually cheaper on posted rent and cheaper again once utilities land, because heat and hot water are in the rent.

Suits: anyone who wants the shortest train ride out of Burnaby, or the cheapest one-bedroom in the city and will accept a 1971 building for it. Does not suit: people who want quiet. Kingsway is eight lanes of traffic and the neighbourhood is a permanent construction site. See Metrotown listings.

Brentwood

Newer than Metrotown by thirty years and it feels it. Millennium Line at Brentwood Town Centre, 17 minutes of riding to Waterfront, Gilmore one stop closer, but you transfer at Commercial-Broadway, and at 8am that is a platform full of people. The Amazing Brentwood puts groceries, drugstore and liquor under one roof at the station: you can live here without a car and without planning.

Stock is overwhelmingly new towers, condo and purpose-built alike, with in-suite laundry, a dishwasher and amenity floors. CMHC recorded 5.6% vacancy in North Burnaby in October 2025 — flagged as a poor-reliability estimate — largely because a wave of condo completions landed at once. That is the softest corner of the Burnaby market, and where a renter has bargaining room.

Suits: people who want a new building and will pay for it, and anyone whose office is on the Millennium Line. Does not suit: bargain hunters, or anyone allergic to living in a podium above a mall. Brentwood listings.

Lougheed

The only Burnaby station where both lines meet, and the best-connected address in the city for anyone commuting sideways to Coquitlam, New Westminster or Surrey rather than downtown. Downtown itself is about half an hour of riding via the Millennium Line and a transfer at Commercial-Broadway; the Expo Line branch through New Westminster is the long way round.

Lougheed straddles the Burnaby-Coquitlam line and CMHC publishes no zone for it, so treat the North Burnaby and Tri-Cities figures as the bracket. Housing is eighties towers, walk-ups on the Burnaby side, and SHAPE's City of Lougheed redevelopment on the old mall site. Just south of it, council approved Pinnacle's Gatineau Place towers at 80 and 73 storeys in September 2024, then a taller version in May 2025 at 87 and 77 — the province's two tallest if built. Expect hoarding for a decade.

Suits: cross-region commuters, SFU students who want a train instead of a hill. Does not suit: anyone who wants a downtown commute under half an hour, or a finished neighbourhood.

Edmonds and Highgate

The cheapest part of Burnaby and the one nobody outside Burnaby talks about. Expo Line at Edmonds, 24 minutes to Waterfront, no transfer. Highgate Village handles groceries and errands, and the Tommy Douglas library is there too. The stock is the oldest in the city — 88% of purpose-built units in the Southeast Burnaby zone predate 1980 — alongside newer towers around the station.

Suits: renters whose ceiling is around $1,600 for a one-bedroom and who would rather have five extra minutes on the train than a roommate. It is the honest answer for anyone running the numbers in our rent affordability guide and finding Vancouver does not work. Does not suit: people who want nightlife or a walkable high street. There isn't one. Burnaby listings.

The areas without a station

Burnaby Heights

Hastings between Boundary and Gamma, the only part of Burnaby with a proper old-fashioned shopping street: independent grocers, delis, hardware, cafés, all at street level. No SkyTrain. The 135 runs Hastings straight into downtown with no transfer, but it is a bus in traffic and the ride time is not guaranteed. Confederation Park is at the east end.

Housing is three-storey walk-ups on the avenues and houses with basement suites behind them, and very little new construction. Suits: people who want a neighbourhood rather than a town centre. Does not suit: anyone who needs a reliable commute clock.

Capitol Hill

The hill above Burnaby Heights, almost entirely single-family houses, so almost every rental is a basement or upper suite in someone's home. The north-slope views are the best in the city. No shops, no station, and the walk back up from Hastings is steep.

Suits: renters who want space, a yard and quiet, and have a car. Not anyone without one. Suites in houses carry a specific risk — a landlord living upstairs can end the tenancy for their own or a close family member's use under section 49(3), and shared-entry arrangements sometimes fall outside the Act entirely. Check both before signing.

Willingdon Heights

The grid between Hastings and Highway 1, west of Willingdon. Quiet, mostly houses with suites plus a few older low-rises, fifteen to twenty minutes' walk from Gilmore or Brentwood station. House-with-suite prices and tower-adjacent transit make it one of the better-value pockets in Burnaby, and it rarely shows up in searches because it has no listing-site label.

Deer Lake

Burnaby's civic and cultural centre: the Art Gallery, the Shadbolt Centre, Burnaby Village Museum, the lake. Almost no rental supply — large houses on large lots, no commercial strip, groceries a drive away. Suits: people who found a suite through someone they know; not an area you can search into.

Burnaby Lake

Sperling-Burnaby Lake and Lake City Way stations, about 20 to 25 minutes of riding to Waterfront plus the transfer. Burnaby Lake Regional Park is the draw, with a perimeter trail and a rowing course. The catch is that the land around the stations is light industrial and big-box, so supply is thin and mostly older buildings along Sperling and Winston. Suits: runners and rowers. Does not suit: anyone who wants to walk to dinner.

SFU and UniverCity

A purpose-built town on top of Burnaby Mountain, about 365 metres up: mid-rise condos and rental buildings plus university residence, with Nesters Market for groceries. The 145 runs to Production Way-University in 12 to 16 minutes on TransLink's Frequent Transit Network, so downtown is a bus, a train and a transfer — realistically an hour door to door.

The mountain has its own weather: when it rains at Metrotown it snows at UniverCity, several times each winter. Suits: SFU students and staff, and anyone who wants a new building in the forest at North Burnaby prices. Does not suit: downtown commuters.

New tower or old walk-up

This is the real Burnaby decision, and the posted rent is a bad way to make it.

A new tower at Brentwood or Metrotown gets you in-suite laundry, a dishwasher, a gym and an elevator that works. You pay twice: in rent, and again in utilities, because post-2000 buildings are individually metered and heat and hot water land on your BC Hydro account. Parking is usually extra. Many of these units are rented condos, so your landlord is an individual with a mortgage and a strata to answer to, and the strata bylaws — pets, guests, move-in fees — bind you as much as the tenancy agreement does.

An older walk-up in Metrotown or Edmonds gets you a bigger floor plan and heat and hot water included, against coin laundry, no dishwasher and single-pane windows. CMHC does not publish a Burnaby purpose-built-versus-condo split by bedroom count, so size the gap yourself: compare pre-1980 and post-2010 listings at your bedroom count in the same postal code, then add the utility difference. Our cost of living guide has that side of the arithmetic.

What the walk-up does not give you is a view, and this is where Burnaby differs from Vancouver. Two Gilmore Place at Brentwood, finished in 2024 at 216 metres, is the tallest completed building in B.C., and Concord's 230-metre Sky Park at Metrotown is due to take the title. Twentieth- and thirtieth-floor rentals come up routinely, at prices that would buy a garden-level suite in Kitsilano. Ask which way the unit faces: north to the inlet, west to the skyline, or east into the next tower's balconies.

The Burnaby-specific risk: your building may be scheduled

Burnaby demolished much of Metrotown's rental stock in the 2010s and the fight over it reshaped city policy. The practical lesson: before signing in an older walk-up near a town centre, search the address against the city's rezoning applications.

Under the Act, the ground for ending a tenancy to demolish or convert a unit is section 49(6), and section 49(2) makes the effective date at least four months after you receive the notice. Section 51(1) owes you one month's rent by that date. For renovations the landlord cannot serve notice at all — section 49.2 requires an application to the director and proof the unit has to be empty, with compensation under section 51.4. If the stated purpose is never carried out, sections 51(2) and 51.4(4) put the landlord on the hook for twelve times the monthly rent. Our eviction notice guide covers valid notices and dispute deadlines.

Burnaby layers its own requirements on top at rezoning sites. Its Tenant Assistance Policy applies where five or more purpose-built rental units are redeveloped. Displaced tenants get moving costs — a mover, or $900 for a studio or one-bedroom, $1,200 for a two-bedroom, $1,400 for three or more — plus a rent top-up capped at the greater of 15% of their current rent, or 30% above the neighbourhood median for a similar unit minus what they were paying. They also get right of first refusal on a replacement unit at their old rent plus increases the Act would have allowed, and units with no returning tenant are set at 20% below CMHC median rents. More than the Act gives you, less than staying put, and only where a rezoning is in play.

The everyday version of the same point: the 2026 rent increase cap is 2.3%, once every twelve months, and it protects a tenancy rather than a person. A five-year Metrotown walk-up tenancy is worth real money; moving to Brentwood for the dishwasher resets you to market.

What this cannot tell you

CMHC's three Burnaby zones average across buildings that have nothing in common, the October 2025 survey is ten months old, and two of the three vacancy estimates carry a reliability warning. Nothing here tells you whether the tower has a chronic elevator problem or whether the guideway runs past your bedroom window. That takes going to look, at the hour you would actually be home.

The numbers cut ten areas to two or three. If the answer is Burnaby, the current listings are the next step, and reading the tenancy agreement properly is the one after.