Why the spike is real (and why most neighbourhoods feel it)
Vancouver has always had a rat problem — the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) has lived alongside the city since its 1886 founding, and the roof rat (Rattus rattus) has been quietly expanding through South Vancouver and Burnaby for about twenty years. What changed in 2025 is not the species. It's the conditions the species thrive in.
Three forces are compounding in 2026. First, the massive construction churn between 2023 and 2024 disturbed established burrow systems across the West End, Mount Pleasant, and central Burnaby — when you dig up a rat colony, it doesn't disappear, it disperses. Second, British Columbia's 2023 ban on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) removed the single most common bait class from the pest-control toolkit. The remaining options work, but they work slowly, which changes rat behaviour in visible ways — more daylight activity, more opportunistic nesting. Third, winter 2025–2026 never seriously dropped below freezing for more than three consecutive days, which doesn't cull the weakest juveniles the way a normal BC winter does.
The four neighbourhoods driving the increase
In our inspection dataset across Metro Vancouver between January 2025 and March 2026, four neighbourhoods account for 63% of year-over-year growth in callouts. These aren't the oldest or densest parts of the city — they're the parts where the three forces above converge.
| Neighbourhood | YoY change | Dominant driver | Housing-stock note |
|---|---|---|---|
| East Vancouver (V5K/V5L/V5N) | +31% | Construction churn + mild winter | Mix of 1920s craftsman + new infill |
| Strathcona / Hastings | +27% | SGAR-ban behavioural shift | 1900–1930s wood frame, heritage |
| Marpole | +22% | Roof-rat expansion | 1960s bungalows + laneway conversions |
| New Westminster (uptown) | +19% | Dense infrastructure + tree canopy | Pre-war + heritage |
How to tell if your home is on the list
Rats are cautious but not subtle. By the time you hear them, they've usually been in the building for weeks. Check for these signs in the order listed — if you find any two, book an inspection rather than waiting.
- Chewed soft-plastic on weatherproofing around exterior doors, vents, or utility penetrations.
- Greasy smudges (rub marks) along the bottom of baseboards, especially behind appliances.
- Dark pellet droppings 8–15mm long in kitchen drawers, pantries, or garage corners.
- Faint scratching or running sounds in the wall, soffit, or attic between 9pm and 3am.
- A faint ammonia smell near the area of suspected activity — that's concentrated urine.
- Your dog or cat fixating on one specific wall or floor area repeatedly.
What a real exclusion looks like (not baiting)
The single most common mistake in Vancouver rat control is leaning on bait. Bait addresses the rats currently inside. It does not address the holes they entered through. Every rat we remove without sealing the entry is replaced by the next rat in two to four weeks.
Our six-step rat exclusion protocol
What a thorough Metro Vancouver rat inspection and exclusion actually looks like, technician-authored.
- 1Exterior perimeter auditWalk the entire foundation plus the roof line. Mark every utility penetration, soffit gap, roof vent, and crawlspace vent. Any gap wider than 12mm is a potential entry.
- 2Interior high-risk inspectionAttic insulation for tunnels. Crawlspace vapor barrier for runs. Kitchen behind fridge and dishwasher. Garage base plates. Every sign of activity gets photographed.
- 3Monitoring stationsTamper-resistant exterior stations at entry hotspots. Interior snap-trap tile inside attic and crawl. No SGARs — legal and safe products only, per BC's 2023 regulation.
- 4Seal the buildingSteel wool inside gaps, hardware cloth over soffit gaps, copper mesh in plumbing chases, concrete patch on weep holes, vent covers swapped to rodent-proof mesh.
- 5Verify over 30 daysTwo follow-up visits. Bait-station checks, trap counts, new activity survey. Every visit logged with photos.
- 6Close the fileFinal inspection; written confirmation the home is rodent-free. 60-day guarantee begins.
Why the SGAR ban changed our playbook
British Columbia's 2023 ban on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides removed brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, and difethialone from the general-use market — tools that kill rats in a single feeding. The ban was the right call: SGARs secondarily poison owls, hawks, and domestic pets that eat exposed rats, and Metro Vancouver's raptor populations had measurably declined. But the ban changed how rats behave in our traps and stations, which changes how we do exclusion.
First-generation anticoagulants require multi-feeding over 5–10 days, which means bait shyness is a bigger factor. Snap traps do more of the lethal work. We've also moved more aggressively toward physical exclusion — if you can't reliably kill what you have, seal out what comes next. The result is slower to feel but more permanent.
The 2026 outlook
We expect the current elevation to hold through 2026 and possibly into 2027. Construction activity in New Westminster and East Vancouver continues; the climate trend is not reversing. The good news is that exclusion is permanent in a way bait never is — homes we sealed in 2018 and 2019 are still rodent-free. The worst-case scenario for any homeowner is to keep treating rats as a recurring nuisance instead of as an entry-point problem. The entry points are finite. Seal them once, properly, and the pressure from outside stops mattering.