A realtor says a $660 apartment listing asking tenants to share a bed proves how ‘grim’ the affordable housing crisis is

• Earlier this month, a Toronto-based realtor came across a nearly $660 apartment listing on Facebook.
• The catch? The person who posted the listing was looking for a roommate to share the same bed.
• Anya Ettinger said the listing paints a "grim" picture of housing affordability in major cities.

Anya Ettinger likes to scroll through real-estate listings instead of social media in her downtime, which isn't a total surprise given she's worked in the industry since 2016.

But earlier this month, Ettinger, a sales representative for the Toronto-based brokerage Bosley Real Estate, came across a listing on Facebook Marketplace that was unlike anything she'd seen before — and not in a good way.

The listing, which she said has since been taken down, was for a lake-facing apartment in downtown Toronto that would cost 900 Canadian dollars, or about $657, a month. But, according to the listing, you wouldn't just be sharing the apartment space — you'd be sharing a queen-sized bed too.

Ettinger was so taken aback that she shared the listing in a TikTok video that has over 613,000 views as of Wednesday.

"Just when you thought the Toronto rental market couldn't get any worse, it did," Ettinger says in the clip, before reading out the details of the listing.

"Looking for an easygoing female to share the master bedroom and the one queen-sized bed," she read out loud. "I have been previously sharing the bedroom which only has one queen size with a roommate I found on Facebook and it worked out perfectly."

Ettinger went on to question why the poster hadn't invested in two twin-sized beds or even a king-size bed where they could set up a "pillow barrier."

"This is so unhinged," she added.

Ettinger says the listing paints a 'grim' picture of housing affordability across major cities

Speaking to Business Insider, Ettinger said she'd seen enough questionable listings in recent years that there wasn't much that could still surprise her. But this definitely did.

According to Ettinger, listings like this one are a result of the affordable housing crisis in Toronto. The cost of living in the city, she said, is hardest on newcomers, who move to Toronto for work or for family reasons with less than $2,000 in disposable income to spend on rent.

"They're stuck having a very unconventional setup like sharing a room or renting an unfinished basement," she said.

In many cases, Ettinger said, the newcomers are immigrants or young people, who agree to subpar living conditions like paying rent for a single bed in a busy houseshare out of necessity.

"In the neighborhoods that we see a lot of new immigrants move to, there are definitely listings and people that purposely purchase properties to convert them into rooming houses and will create relatively inhumane setups," she said.

Some landlords and property owners, Ettinger said, are "capitalizing" off people who are arriving in the city with "very little" or who are living off of government stipends, which provide them with slimmer housing options.

Ettinger said she doesn't know for certain if the Facebook Marketplace listing was posted by a tenant or a property owner, but either way, she said it paints a "dire" image of housing affordability not only in Toronto but in other major cities as well.

Her thoughts on the housing costs in Toronto are in line with a report from the financial services firm UBS that was published in October 2022. As Business Insider's Alcynna Lloyd reported, the data from UBS showed that home prices in Toronto have more than tripled over the past 25 years, surging to a price level that's "not sustainable."

To help combat the crisis, the city is aiming to build 40,000 new affordable rental units by 2030, and the mayor, Olivia Chow, hopes to increase that number by more than 20,000, CBC reported.

But as of today, Ettinger said the listing she discovered is just another example of how severe the housing crisis is.

"It just paints a very grim picture of the affordability crisis that we're experiencing here," she said. "We're nowhere near New York's level of unaffordability relative to income, but it's pretty bad."