'Rare and expensive:' Why is it so hard to find a 3-bedroom rental these days?

Looking for a three-bedroom rental? Get in line.

Amanda Laflair has been on a waiting list for one she says she could afford for four years.

"I work full time ... and between bills and groceries and everything else, I'll never be able to afford full market rent," Laflair, a 36-year-old personal support worker who lives in Ottawa, told CBC News.

Laflair, her husband and their three children have lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment for the last five years, where they pay rent she says is geared to lower incomes. Her two sons sleep in the larger bedroom. She and her daughter sleep in the second bedroom, sharing a bed.

Her husband sleeps every night on the couch.

"We don't have space for anything," she told CBC News, while explaining she also asked her rental company about internal transfers, but there are rarely any three bedroom available.

"Or if they do it's over $2,000 per month plus utilities, which I definitely can't afford," she said.

For many Canadians, finding housing at all is daunting amid surging prices and decreased availability marking Canada's rental housing crisis. Demand is outpacing supply across the country, with vacancy rates reaching a new low and average rent growth increases reaching a new high, notes a January rental market report from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

And a recent CBC News analysis of more than 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada's largest cities found the market is even more dire for people looking for multiple bedrooms — typically, families. That leaves many families cramped in smaller units because they can't find something bigger, and if they do, they can't afford it.

Only 14,000 units with two bedrooms or more were potentially vacant and affordable for the median income of families living in a rented place, according to CBC's analysis. And for those looking for three bedrooms, it's even worse, with only approximately 2,850 units potentially vacant and affordable in major cities across the country, according to CBC's analysis.

CBC calculated affordability based on rental costs staying below 30 per cent of a family's gross income, the generally agreed-upon "rule," using a $64,108 median income for families who rent. That works out to spending about $1,600 on rent per month.

The average price for a three-bedroom rental in May was $3,775 per month in Vancouver, $3,638 per month in Toronto, $3,500 per month in Montreal, $2,982 per month in Halifax and $2,741 per month in Ottawa, according to listing website rentals.ca. 

"These three-bedroom units are rare and expensive," Aled ab Iorwerth, deputy chief economist with CMHC, told CBC News.

"It doesn't leave a lot of options."