2 Bedroom Apartment for Rent in New Westminster

What we’d expect it to ask

$2,845 / month

8 times in ten the answer lands between $2,378 and $3,214. That is the width of what we actually know, measured against listings this model had never seen — not a margin we chose.

Asking $2,500 is $345 below that — further below than the ±10% 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

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

Location

4 min on foot to Columbia (Expo Line), about 41 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

$2,500 is $100 above the middle of the 119 two-bedrooms we are tracking in New Westminster right now ($2,400). Most of them ask between $2,000 and $2,675.

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

Laundry, parking, air conditioning, the bathroom count and whether the home sits below ground are priced in wherever the advertisement states them. The floor, the view, the light, the condition and the noise are not, and nothing we hold measures them: two identical floor plans, one renovated and one not, get the same estimate from us.

Where an advertisement says nothing, we price it as unsaid rather than as absent. A short ad is not a worse home, and scoring it as one would price the landlord’s writing instead of the flat.

The advertisement doesn’t say, and it matters:

• What floor is it on?
• Which way does it face?
• Is parking included or extra?
• Are pets allowed?
• When is it available?