VANCOUVER — Madeleine Davis expects she could be couch-surfing with friends when she heads back to university this fall.

That reality is starting to strike home for the fifth-year University of B.C. philosophy student and her two roommates, who have been searching since Aug. 1 for an affordable house close to the UBC campus.

“We’re definitely running out of time,” Davis, 22, said Tuesday. “We’ve had a lot of near-misses but a lot of trouble finding somewhere. We’re still looking and following up leads but it’s quite a difficult time right now because everybody’s looking.”

Davis and her friends, who returned home after separate overseas experiences and internships this summer, never expected it would be so hard to find new digs.

But they’re also in new territory: the trio wants to live close to the university — where rents tend to be higher than average at between $550 and $750 per room — and they’re facing increased competition from graduates, young families and many of the other 300,000-plus post-secondary students vying for the same space in an ever-tightening rental market.

Vacancy rates in Metro Vancouver edged downward in 2013, dropping to 1.7 per cent from 1.8 per cent in 2012, making it one of the lowest vacancy rates among the 27 centres surveyed in the province, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s latest Rental Market Report, released last fall.

Two-bedroom apartments saw the biggest drop in vacancy rates, while rents rose marginally for one- and three-bedroom units across the region to an average of $1,005 per month.

A one-bedroom in the City of Vancouver, for instance, went for an average of $1,090, compared with $1,198 in the West End and downtown, $953 in Richmond, $1,005 in North Vancouver, $900 in Burnaby and $751 in Surrey.

The University Endowment Lands had the highest rents for one-bedroom units at an average $1,347 per month, followed by West Vancouver at $1,281 per month.

But for many students, even those average rents are way out of their league, and the suites may not even be suitable.

“It just gets really stressful, that you’re going to be settling for something or paying more than you wanted to,” said Raven Nyman, a third-year UBC student who just signed a lease. “There were a lot of places we saw that were not the best.”

Richard Sam, principal of surveys for CMHC, said the lower vacancy rate in Metro Vancouver is a simple tale of supply and demand, scripted by improving employment trends among the younger population who tend to rent, as well as a boost in international non-resident migration.

Most new migrants tend to stay in and around the downtown city core when they first arrive, driving up the demand for rental housing. The University Endowment Lands and city of Vancouver had the lowest vacancy rates, for instance, while Surrey, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows had the most rental room to spare.

“We’re just seeing more of an influx of students, to be honest,” Sam said. “It’s more of a supply and demand issue so we’re seeing more students looking for placements around the universities. I would think the same thing is happening around Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.”

He noted two-bedroom units are seeing the lower vacancies as students seek to double up and share the rent in this hot-button market.

John Calveley, of Alma Mater Society at UBC, said there has been a rising trend of students seeking two- and three-bedroom units off campus in the past few years as rents rose by five to 10 per cent.

While first-year students can stay on campus, there’s a wait list at both UBC and SFU, which means more people are looking for places outside.

Davis, who spent last year living near Commercial Drive in a five-bedroom house for $2,500 per month, acknowledges it would be cheaper to live further away from the university but she doesn’t want to face a hour-long bus commute.

“It makes sense for us as students to live close to UBC,” she said.

Nyman agrees. She has been living with family in North Vancouver this summer but wanted to find something in Dunbar, Kitsilano or Kerrisdale to avoid the cross-town commute. She finally struck it lucky last weekend when she and two friends snagged a basement suite at Camosun and 41st Avenue.

Not only is it in a great location — it’s at the last bus stop before campus — but is less than $500 per month for each of the girls, who had been prepared to pay at least $100 more than that.

“I don’t know how we found it,” said Nyman, 19. “I’m so happy.”

Like Davis, Nyman was worried she wasn’t going to find a suitable home in time. Although she started scouring the housing ads in April, there was nothing for students listed on Craigslist or Kijiji until August, which meant there was a run on the available spots.

In the past few weeks, Nyman and her friends viewed nearly 10 places, finding some that didn’t even have promised amenities like a stove or washer and dryer.

In some cases, they arrived at an open house to find someone else signing a lease. And even when they found their dream suite on Camosun, it wasn’t a given that they would get it, with at least 50 others wanting the space.

“You have to go a little out of your comfort zone because you have to be aggressive and persistent,” Nyman said. “I really had to continue to text and call (the landlord). I had to be persistent to stay on his radar because there were so many good applicants. We had to stick out so we could snag the place.”

Davis agreed that students have to be persuasive to get a spot, especially when they’re up against families or experienced workers who have references to back up their applications.

“We’re looking for anything. We haven’t actually been that picky,” she said. “The biggest problem we have is to try to convince people they should take a chance on us.”

ksinoski@vancouversun.com

Twitter:@ksinoski

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