Can You Negotiate Rents in this Market?

So the vacancy rate stands at 0.5% and the RE market has priced many first-time buyers, like ourselves, out. Chances are the vacancy rate will stay this way for some time; it's been hovering around 1% for several years now.

Can we negotiate rents with landlords now, or is this purely out of the question? We've noticed some trends with rental suites: you can guess when the properties were bought based on the asking price for suites. Higher, recent purchase, lower, it's been a holding property. Something like that anyway.

I'll use us as an example. We have no dependants (pets included), we're quiet, we don't smoke, we don't party, we're pretty private people, we keep a place clean, have good jobs, and both study full or part time in an effort to advance our careers. We come with good references. We feel fairly confident that we'd present no problems to a landlord if they lived up to their end of the agreement. We're OK with signing a one-year lease.

If we look at a place, that we know is quite nice, and is therefore going to receive plenty of applications, are we in a position to negotiate rent if we think the price is a bit much?

I tend to think that just asking for a rent reduction, even if its low ($50/month on a $1000/month suite) that we'd send the wrong signal to the landlord and we'd get pushed down to the bottom of the pile.

If we do attempt to negotiate, do we wait until we get the call back offering us the place, and then ask? Anyone have any success on this venture in this or similar markets?