Just three months after they met, Megan Woodhouse and her now-husband moved in together. “We went on our first date on a Wednesday, and by that weekend we were pretty much inseparable,” said Woodhouse. Soon, both of their leases were up, and each had been struggling to afford rent on their own. They made the call.
“The first few months were tough. We had to learn each other very quickly,” said Woodhouse, a Toronto senior marketing manager who had moved to the city for graduate school in 2021 and met her partner on the dating app Hinge. Others in her life worried it was too fast. “I tried to convince my parents he was my roommate because they were concerned about the speed at which things were moving.”
But they got through it, and eloped last November. “I am still messy and he is still a neat freak, but it works,” Woodhouse said. “We just fit.”
But it doesn’t always work out so well.
As a result of skyrocketing rent prices, some Toronto daters are choosing to shack up with partners much earlier than they may have otherwise, accelerating the stakes of their relationships. Moving in together halves monthly costs, and may be preferable to sharing with roommates or moving back in with parents.
In the past five years, housing costs have risen significantly. In 2025, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto was $1,761, and $2,045 for a two-bedroom apartment; five years prior, the averages were $1,421 and $1,637.
Dating as a means to accommodation
One Torontonian’s Hinge profile went viral on Reddit for stating: “Together we could: afford a 1-bedroom apartment in Toronto, plus maybe some groceries if we feel like getting crazy.”
A Redditor responded: “At this point, I’m dating to afford a better quality of life and split rent on a semi-decent one-bedroom. Falling in love would be a nice afterthought.”
Some are actually starting relationships for this reason, sometimes referred to by the problematic term “hobosexuals.” It describes charming suitors who want to move things along quickly, only for their love interests to realize they are actually using them for accommodation.
Alexa*, a 26-year-old tattoo artist and photographer, was 23 when she hooked up with a guy she’d known for some time. Within two weeks, he told her he loved her and started sleeping at her Kensington Market apartment more often than she would have liked. “I got so tired of him, I would lie about going places just to have time alone,” she said. “He stashed stuff at other people’s places and stole my clothes, so he always had a reason to come back.”
Soon, she learned he’d been evicted from his own place for not paying rent a few days after they’d gotten together, and he had a roster of other women he could stay with if things went south. “He collected ‘crash pad’ girls like Pokemon cards.”
The risks of jumping into a lease
Moving in to save on costs can be pragmatic, but it has its drawbacks. “For the majority of young professionals, shared living is a cost-effective way to pay rent since it allows them to afford more affluent areas like Leslieville, the Annex or Liberty Village,” said John Zinati, a Toronto real estate lawyer at Zinati Kay. Dividing costs like utilities, groceries and transportation also helps keep life in the city within reach. “That said, moving in early can strain relationships because couples are adjusting to lifestyle differences earlier than perhaps they would have anticipated.”
That was the case for Tara, a marketing professional who asked to be identified by her first name only. When she reconnected with her ex-boyfriend of two years just before the pandemic, they decided to move in together about six weeks into their reunion. Tara was living in women’s low-income housing at the time — the only thing she could afford in Toronto — and jumped at the chance to share rent with her boyfriend, who had a stable income.
But the butterflies in her stomach upon reuniting with her ex quickly turned into knots. “We realized we didn’t have the same beliefs on anything anymore,” Tara said. “He expected that I would be the housekeeper, and I felt it should be more 50/50. I didn’t know how much he smoked and drank, and how much money he spent. I was super naive.”
“But what do you do when you live together? There were all these things we’d have to figure out [if we broke up], so we just kept trying.” Eventually, after catching him in a lie about his spending habits once again, Tara kicked out her boyfriend for good. She got another job on top of her full-time job to be able to pay the rent on her own. She felt her peace was worth the price.
How to navigate an early move-in
Even when it’s a healthy, consensual step forward, moving in with a partner means learning how to manage day-to-day conflict fast, without the opportunity to take a break for a night or two. “When the step is taken too early, without setting a foundation for what each person needs, it can amplify vulnerability and those existing cracks in the connection,” said Toronto psychotherapist Arkadiy Volkov, clinical director at Feel Your Way Therapy.
That was certainly the case for Jeff, a Toronto designer who moved into his boyfriend’s downtown studio apartment after six months of dating to help ease his partner’s financial stress. When he noticed that his partner continued to spend money freely, he grew resentful, especially since he’d actually started paying more in rent, having moved from a house with multiple roommates. “It embittered a lot of conversations we had about money,” Jeff said. Eventually, they broke up, but he doesn’t regret moving in early. “I’m happy it showed that the relationship wasn’t going to last, though the move in was probably an accelerant to that.”
Romance meets pragmatism
Before moving in with a partner, Volkov recommends discussing how you’ll divide bills and household tasks, what boundaries each party would like to hold in their shared space, and what moving in together means to you. “For one person, it could be a step toward commitment, while the other person just thinks of it as a way to save money on rent,” Volkov said. “If you take the steps without knowing the implications, that’s where risks come up. If you see moving in together not just as a financial decision but as a new phase in your emotional closeness, that’s when couples thrive.”
For Chantelle Gubert, it’s a bit of both. She met her boyfriend on an app in the summer of 2024. By the fall, he couldn’t afford to keep his place in Toronto’s west end on his own anymore. In spring 2025, eight months after meeting, they signed a new lease together. “It’s not much more expensive than people pay to have roommates,” said Gubert, a solar asset manager in renewable energy. “I guess I have a roommate, and so does he, but it’s a roommate that you love. So it works.”
Living with both roommates you love and roommates you don’t can be the answer to saving even more money. When video editor Natasha Zoccoli asked her boyfriend to move in with her after just three months so they could both save on rent, her landlord wouldn’t allow it. Three months later, they moved into a three-bedroom house near Toronto Metropolitan University with two other roommates. They each paid $600 in rent. “That was a great benefit for us,” she recalled. “We had a lot of extra savings.”
A year later, Zoccoli and her boyfriend could afford their own place, and last September, they got married. “There were those bigger struggles of setting boundaries and finding space and dealing with our different habits, but it worked out for us, and we decided we loved living together,” Zoccoli said. “If you can live with someone right off the bat, I think that’s a relationship green flag.”
