Surrey is cheaper than Vancouver on housing and getting cheaper in absolute terms, with benchmark prices down 6% to 11% across the city depending on where you look. What is going up is the cost of running the place: water, sewer, solid waste and district energy charges all rose for 2026, and policing now costs the city $284.5 million a year.
Every figure on this page is in Canadian dollars, comes from an official source, and carries the date the source measured it. Worth stating, because most cost-of-living pages for Surrey are built from crowd-sourced sites that display in another currency.
About these numbers
Sources are the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, CMHC, BC Assessment, the City of Surrey’s own budget documents, TransLink, the BC Centre for Disease Control, the Province of BC and Living Wage for Families BC. Where no official Surrey figure exists, this page says so rather than filling the gap. Last verified 18 September 2026.
Buying: $390,000 between the four sub-areas
Surrey is reported in four sub-areas, and the spread between them is around $390,000 on a detached house. One city-wide number hides that.
| Area | Detached | Townhouse | Apartment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surrey North | $1,262,400 (−11.5%) | $681,400 (−10.5%) | $401,400 (−10.0%) |
| Surrey Central | $1,322,800 (−8.8%) | $748,000 (−5.9%) | $462,800 (−11.2%) |
| Cloverdale | $1,339,700 (−6.2%) | $757,200 (−6.4%) | $505,700 (−11.3%) |
| South Surrey / White Rock | $1,649,200 (−7.5%) | $820,300 (−11.1%) | $550,800 (−6.2%) |
| City of Surrey combined | $1,407,800 (−8.3%) | $764,900 (−7.8%) | $450,800 (−9.5%) |
Benchmark prices, August 2026, with the change against August 2025. Source: Fraser Valley Real Estate Board. That combined line excludes White Rock.
North Surrey is where the entry-level apartment market sits, at a $401,400 benchmark. South Surrey is a different city financially.
BC Assessment’s 2026 roll put the typical Surrey detached home at $1,464,000, down 6% from $1,563,000, and the typical strata unit at $649,000, down 7% from $695,000, both valued as of 1 July 2025.
Renting: CMHC rates its Surrey data excellent
CMHC’s October 2025 survey is the most recent official rental data, and it rates its Surrey figures as excellent reliability, which is better than it manages for most municipalities.
| Unit | Average rent, Oct 2025 |
|---|---|
| Bachelor | $1,606 |
| One bedroom | $1,602 |
| Two bedroom | $1,872 |
| Three bedroom or larger | $1,956 |
Vacancy across Surrey was 4.3%, which is genuinely loose by Metro Vancouver standards, but it varies sharply by area: 2.5% in Guildford at the tight end and 5.7% in South Surrey at the loose end. CMHC surveys Surrey as six zones, Cloverdale and Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, South Surrey, Surrey City Centre and Whalley.
As with everywhere, CMHC averages include long-tenure tenants under rent-increase caps, so a newly vacant unit will be quoted above these figures.
Property tax, utilities and the policing bill
Surrey council approved its 2026 property tax increase in March 2026, adding about $75 a year to the city portion of the bill for an average single-family home and generating $14.36 million in new revenue.
The context behind it is the police transition. Surrey Police Service’s 2026 budget is $284.5 million, up $45 million on 2025, and policing costs have risen by about $100 million cumulatively since the transition from the RCMP began in 2021. Before the city and the police board settled on that figure in February 2026, the mayor warned publicly that the board’s original request could have implied a tax increase of up to 18%.
Utilities rose separately:
| Charge | 2026 change | Annual impact |
|---|---|---|
| Water | +5.3% | about $25.52 |
| Sewer | +1.37% | about $10.14 |
| Solid waste | +1.2% | to $344.08 a year |
| Drainage and flood protection | +1.5% | not published separately |
| District energy (Surrey City Energy) | +6.4% | not published separately |
Metro Vancouver’s wholesale water increase of 6.4% and a $7 per tonne rise in tipping fees drove most of that. The district energy increase followed a 10% rise in gas prices.
For electricity, BC Hydro’s approved residential increase was 3.75% effective 1 April 2025 and again on 1 April 2026.
Transit fares rose 5% on 1 July 2026
Current TransLink adult fares, effective 1 July 2026 after an average 5% increase:
| Fare | One zone | Two zones | Three zones |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compass stored value | $2.85 | $4.20 | $5.40 |
| Adult monthly pass | $117.20 | $156.70 | $211.65 |
All bus and HandyDART trips are a one-zone fare at any time and distance, which matters more in Surrey than in most of the region because so much of the city is bus-served rather than on rail. A SkyTrain commute into Vancouver crosses zones, so check TransLink’s zone map for your own station before committing to a pass.
The change coming is the Surrey–Langley SkyTrain, a 16-kilometre Expo Line extension along Fraser Highway from King George Station to 203 Street in Langley City, with eight new stations. Costed at $5.996 billion, it is under construction now and planned to enter service in late 2029.
Food: no Surrey basket, so Fraser Health is the proxy
There is no official grocery basket priced for Surrey alone. The closest official figure is the BC Centre for Disease Control’s nutritious food basket costing, which came to $1,193 a month for the Fraser Health region against a provincial average of $1,263. The basket assumes a reference family of two adults and two children, one aged 14 to 18 and one aged 4 to 8, priced from data collected in May and June 2022 and published in 2023.
For a more current national reference point, Canada’s Food Price Report 2026 projected a family of four would spend $17,571.79 over the year, around $1,465 a month, on a predicted food price increase of 4% to 6%.
Neither figure is a Surrey price. Both are more defensible than a crowd-sourced estimate.
Childcare, which changes the whole calculation
For families this is often the second-largest line after rent, and provincial programmes have moved it substantially.
At a participating $10-a-day ChildCareBC centre, full-time care is a flat $200 a month. Spaces are limited and demand exceeds supply.
At other licensed providers, the Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative cuts fees directly: up to $900 a month off full-time infant and toddler group care, up to $600 off family child care for the same age group, and up to $545 off group care for preschool-age children. Fees are not reduced below $200 a month. The reduction applies automatically at participating centres with no application.
What a Surrey daycare charges before those reductions is not published by any official source, so this page does not guess at it. Ask providers directly, and ask whether they participate.
Household income: $116,600, just under the region
Average household income in Surrey was $116,600, against $117,300 for Metro Vancouver as a whole. Those come from the 2021 census, reporting the 2020 income year, which remains the most recent official income data until the 2026 census releases its income figures.
The living wage for Metro Vancouver is $27.85 an hour, calculated for 2025 and published in November 2025. Two working adults with two children need that hourly rate to cover actual local costs. The 2026 calculation is not published until November, so $27.85 is the current figure, not the $27.05 that applied to 2024.
A worked example, with the gaps marked
A single person renting a one-bedroom in Surrey and using transit:
| Line | Monthly | Source quality |
|---|---|---|
| Rent, one bedroom | $1,602 | CMHC survey average, Oct 2025, so expect more on a new lease |
| Transit, monthly pass | $117.20 to $156.70 | Depends on zones crossed |
| Electricity | varies | Tier-dependent |
| Food | varies | No Surrey-specific figure exists |
| Phone, internet, insurance | varies | No official local figure |
Sourced lines come to roughly $1,719 to $1,759 a month before power, food and anything personal. That is deliberately partial. It is the part that stands up.
Surrey against Vancouver
On housing the gap is large and clear. Surrey’s combined detached benchmark of $1,407,800 sits well under anything comparable in Vancouver, and its apartment benchmark of $450,800 is roughly two thirds of Burnaby’s. Rent follows the same pattern, with CMHC’s Surrey one-bedroom average at $1,602.
What you pay instead is travel time and, for much of the city, a car. Rail reaches only the northern end until the Langley extension opens in late 2029.
A fuller read sits in what living here is actually like and our breakdown of how the six communities differ.
Two more things worth knowing
Population figures for Surrey disagree, and both sources are official. BC Stats put the city at 703,531 as of 1 July 2025, growing 1.9% a year. The City of Surrey’s own estimate, from around December 2025, is 733,760. The gap is roughly 30,000 and comes down to method. On the last actual census, in 2021, Surrey counted 568,322 against Vancouver’s 662,248, so Surrey has not overtaken Vancouver as British Columbia’s largest city, whatever you may have read.
School enrolment fell for the first time in more than twenty years. Surrey Schools remains the largest district in the province, but enrolment for 2025/26 came in at 76,977, down 1.12% or 871 students on the year, which the district attributed to federal immigration policy changes and interprovincial moves. Thirteen ministry-funded capital projects worth 234 classrooms are under way, ten of them in construction. For a city long defined by portables, that combination is worth watching.
Budgeting the move
Moving costs land in the same month as a damage deposit and first rent, which is what catches people out. Our guides to when to book and the residential moving checklist cover the sequencing.
The city is large and access varies enormously between a Whalley tower and an acreage in Cloverdale, so a quote given without someone asking about your access is a guess. Our Surrey movers can put a real figure together, and we cover the region as a moving company in Vancouver.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average cost of living in Surrey BC for one person?
No official body publishes a single monthly figure, and the sites that do are crowd-sourced. What can be sourced: CMHC’s October 2025 Surrey one-bedroom average of $1,602 and a transit pass between $117.20 and $156.70 depending on zones. Power, food and personal costs sit on top of roughly $1,720 to $1,760 of sourced monthly costs.
Is Surrey cheaper than Vancouver?
Substantially, on housing. The combined detached benchmark was $1,407,800 in August 2026 and the apartment benchmark $450,800, with North Surrey apartments at $401,400. CMHC’s Surrey one-bedroom average was $1,602 in October 2025. The offset is travel time, since rail only reaches the north of the city until the Langley extension opens in late 2029.
What salary do you need to live in Surrey?
Living Wage for Families BC calculated Metro Vancouver’s living wage at $27.85 an hour for 2025, the rate two working adults with two children need to cover real costs. Households in Surrey averaged $116,600 on 2021 census data, reporting the 2020 income year.
How much is rent in Surrey?
The October 2025 CMHC survey put averages at $1,606 for a bachelor, $1,602 for a one bedroom, $1,872 for two bedrooms and $1,956 for three or more. Citywide vacancy was 4.3%, ranging from 2.5% in Guildford to 5.7% in South Surrey. A newly vacant unit will be quoted above these averages.
Why did Surrey’s taxes go up in 2026?
Council approved its increase in March 2026, adding about $75 a year to the city portion of an average single-family bill. The dominant pressure is policing: Surrey Police Service’s 2026 budget is $284.5 million, up $45 million on 2025, with roughly $100 million of cumulative increase since the transition from the RCMP began in 2021. Water, sewer, solid waste, drainage and district energy charges rose separately.
How much is childcare in Surrey?
A participating $10-a-day ChildCareBC centre charges $200 a month for full-time care. Elsewhere the provincial fee reduction takes up to $900 a month off full-time infant and toddler group care and up to $545 off preschool-age group care, with a floor of $200 a month. Pre-reduction market rates for Surrey are not published by any official source.
