1 Bedroom Townhouse for Rent in New Westminster

What we’d expect it to ask

$1,651 / month

8 times in ten the answer lands between $1,270 and $2,093. That is the width of what we actually know, measured against listings this model had never seen — not a margin we chose.

Asking $1,250 is $401 below that — further below than the ±11.4% we can put down to our own error. On size and location alone, it asks less than its neighbours do.

Asks less than we’d expect

What moves that number

The advertisement does not state a floor area, so size is not priced in.

Each line is the difference this one thing makes, holding everything else where it is. They do not add up to the rent.

Location

15 min on foot to Sapperton (Expo Line), about 54 min to Waterfront.

Scored from the map pin alone — rapid transit, town centres and parks, in straight lines. It knows nothing about the street, the hill, the building or the neighbours, and buses and the SeaBus are not in it, so places served by those score lower here than they deserve.

Against the ones next to it

$1,250 is $740 below the middle of the 307 one-bedrooms we are tracking in New Westminster right now ($1,990). Most of them ask between $1,875 and $2,098.

A straight count of asking prices in the area, with nothing adjusted for — unlike the estimate above, it does not care that this one is bigger or closer to a station.

What the estimate cannot see

Floor, view, condition, noise and everything inside the walls are missing from all but a handful of the advertisements we index, so none of them are priced in above. Two identical floor plans, one renovated and one not, get the same estimate from us. This ad does not give a floor area either, so size is not in it.

This one is unusually forthcoming. It does state:

Worth reading — but too rare across the feed for us to put a number on.

The advertisement doesn’t say, and it matters:

• Which way does it face?