How the score works

Straight-line distance from the centre of an area to each of your places. The score halves about every 5 km.

With more than one place, a far place pulls the score down more than a plain average would. One great trip does not make up for one unworkable trip. Each place counts by how many days a week you go, so a weekly trip counts a fifth as much as a daily one.

This is map distance. It ignores water and hills, so a short line can still be a long trip.

A weighted count of stops within a 500 m walk of the area centre, or 800 m for rapid transit. People walk further to reach SkyTrain.

A SkyTrain station counts for 10 bus stops and the SeaBus for 8. These weights are our judgement, not measurements.

This counts stops. It is not travel time, and it ignores how often service runs, so a frequent route and a rare one count the same.

Distance starts at 40% of the score, transit and rent at 30% each. Each priority you pick adds the same extra weight to its factor, then everything is scaled back to 100%.

Some factors only count when you pick them: SkyTrain nearby, busier or calmer, and nearby places. Nothing else you tell us, such as home type, laundry or pets, changes a score. Those go into your listing searches.

Full marks when a rapid transit station is within 800 m of the area centre, zero otherwise.

This counts stations. It is not travel time.

Residents in the area from the 2021 census. Busier scores full marks at 4,000 residents or more. Calmer is the mirror image, with full marks at none.

Residents are not noise. An area beside a highway can have few residents and still be loud.

Groceries, parks, schools, childcare, cafes and restaurants, and pharmacies, from OpenStreetMap. For each kind you pick, we find the nearest one to the area centre. Within 400 m scores full marks. The score then falls smoothly, to about 12 at 1,600 m and zero past 2,400 m. This is the shape Walk Score uses.

Distances are straight lines, not walking routes. OpenStreetMap is uneven, so a gap can mean a place is unmapped rather than missing.

CMHC’s survey rent for the sizes you chose, compared with your budget. At or under budget scores full marks. The score reaches zero at 25% over.

Cheaper earns no bonus. Otherwise the cheapest areas would rank first whether or not they suit you.

CMHC surveys once a year, each October. These are averages for existing rentals, so they are lower than what listings ask.

CMHC withholds rents when the sample is too small. When that happens, we drop the rent score for that area and share its weight across the other two. We do not count the gap as zero.

Counting it as zero would rank “we do not know” below “too expensive” without telling you. Wherever a score is missing, we say so.

An area is one hexagon in a grid over Metro Vancouver, about 860 m across. We score every hexagon, then group them under the neighbourhood names people use.

Each place shows its best area and the range across the rest, never an average. An average would hide a great corner beside a station. The range stops that one corner from making the whole place look good.

Rent works differently. CMHC publishes it only for larger survey zones, so every area in one zone shares a rent. Each rent names the zone it came from.