toronto rent

Someone in Toronto is renting a DIY bedroom in their tiny condo living room for $1,400 a month

The price to rent a bedroom in a shared apartment in Toronto has now reached a figure that some of us can remember paying for an entire place of our own in the not-so-distant past, and the market only seems to be getting worse for tenants as the cost of living crisis drags on.

Landlords dealing with exorbitant mortgage rates and tenants coping with the inflated price of just about everything are becoming equally desperate, and too many of the units hitting the market — and getting occupied for ludicrous prices — now offer quite dismal conditions with zero privacy.

While it may not be as bad as sharing a bedroom or an actual bed with a stranger, one new listing and its makeshift DIY room-in-a-living-room shows how bad the landscape is for renters.

The rental, shared by a local realtor on TikTok, is in a modern condo similar to many in the city, but with even less space than one might anticipate upon first glance.

"Just when we thought the Toronto rental market couldn't get any crazier, you need to see this," the poster says as the camera pans through the apartment, which is clearly only meant to be a small two-bedroom unit.

"I came across this room rental the other day where they basically just put up some walls in the living room of a two-bedrom condo," the agent explains, showing the hallway in the extremely narrow unit, where a new wall has blocked off the already-tiny living room to make it into a private space.

Inside the room, a single bed abuts a storage unit that is being used as a wall to divide the sleeping quarters from the shared kitchen, which is made substantially smaller as a result.

A desk in the corner faces out what was once the living room windows, meaning that the sole communal space for the three renters is limited to the uncomfortably cramped kitchen, bathroom, hallway and balcony.

The poster calls the listing "one of the craziest" he's seen in a while, going on to reveal the real kicker, which is the rental price of the converted room: a whopping $1,400 per month plus utilities.

Unfortunately, we can only expect more ads like this to pop up as homeowners renew their mortgages at steeper rates that may only get higher still, along with the still-high cost of so many other goods and services.

Lead photo by

@a1_realestate


Latest Videos



Latest Videos


Join the conversation Load comments

Latest in Real Estate

Toronto strip mall listed for sale at just $1

Toronto mansion with breathtaking modern interiors selling for $15 million

$1 million Toronto home comes with magazine-ready interior design

Opulent $12 million Toronto mansion comes with just about everything in marble

Toronto is no longer Canada's second-most expensive city for renters

Soaring towers with hotel and condos to rise tall in Ontario city's skyline

Tiny partially-gutted Toronto house is still selling for $700,000

How U.S. tariffs could affect Canadian renters