What furnished units actually cost per door.
Most furniture quotes you'll receive are one number with nothing behind it. That number exists to survive a five-minute conversation, not an audit. Here is what a DAF costed plan looks like instead — the same format we return inside one business day on any real unit mix.
The worked example
Take one unit type in a mid-rise rental building and a single line item from its spec — a club chair with ottoman, workshop-direct:
| Supplier price | $650.00 |
| Freight (ocean + drayage, share of container) | $180.00 |
| Duty (0–9.5% MFN on most wooden/upholstered pieces) | $60.00 |
| Inspection | $0.00 |
| Last-mile delivery to floor | $45.00 |
| Aggregate landed cost | $935.00 |
| DAF service fee — flat 20% of landed | $187.00 |
| Your cost, this line item | $1,122.00 CAD |
Every line is visible because every line is negotiable by you. If your team can beat our freight rate, the freight line changes and the fee moves with it — down. Install labour is billed at cost and carries no fee at all.
Why the Canadian stack matters in 2026
The tariff environment split North America into two different furniture-importing countries. The US stack on China-origin goods runs through Section 301, IEEPA actions, and de-minimis changes that have made cross-border e-commerce furniture structurally more expensive. Canada's regime is dramatically lighter for the same goods: most wooden and upholstered furniture clears at 0–9.5% MFN with no surtax; steel-frame pieces carry a 25% surtax on steel-content value only; GST is recoverable as an input tax credit for a registered importer.
For a Canadian rental portfolio, that asymmetry is real money on a 200-unit fit-out — and it is one of the reasons a workshop-direct rail with itemized landed pricing beats a single-number quote here. It is also why we tell US-bound clients honestly: transshipping through Vancouver does not change US origin determination. We run the honest plan for whichever country the building stands in.
What a refresh cycle does to the math
Furnished units aren't a one-time capex line. On a hold-period asset the kit exchanges piece-by-piece over a 3–7 year window — a chair at year four, a sofa at year six — without re-onboarding the project. Because the original plan already names workshops and landed prices per line, year-four exchanges price off the signed plan instead of a fresh negotiation. The asset never ages out of brand, and the per-door number stays defensible at refinancing.
Send a unit mix and a target handover window. You get the whole plan in this format — every line, every workshop named — inside one business day. No charge, no meeting attached.
Start procurementRates referenced are the June 2026 reference card from the DAF procurement library; duty lines are confirmed against the current Customs Tariff before any order. This page is general information for planning, not customs advice on a specific shipment.