East Vancouver Townhomes: Why Upsizers Keep Crossing the Bridge (and What the Numbers Show)

If you are a family in a two-bedroom East Vancouver condo, you already know the problem. You want a third bedroom, a door that opens to a yard or a street, and a kitchen where two people can stand at once. A townhome is the obvious answer. Then you start looking in East Van and the shortlist is very short.

I track new-home townhome projects across Metro Vancouver at Vancouver Dwelling, and I set that project data beside public resale figures. My tracking covers supply. It does not tell me who is moving where, so I can show you what upsizers can find, and what it costs them. I can’t give you a migration count. What the supply side shows is clear enough.

What a new East Vancouver townhome gets you

My Vancouver Dwelling tracking shows seven actively selling townhome projects in Vancouver East, with 307 homes in total. The average home is 964 square feet at an average price of $1,128,665, which works out to about $1,170 per square foot.

Six of those seven projects average under 1,100 square feet. The exception is The Charles, a 16-home project on East 21st Avenue at 1,393 square feet and about $1.42M. It sold 16 of 16. The larger-format product sold; there was just very little of it.

Compare that with what East Van townhomes used to look like. The 28 sold-out East Vancouver townhome projects (616 homes, built and sold over the last decade and a half) average 1,221 square feet. Today’s new average is about 21% smaller. The homes are getting smaller while the price per square foot climbs from $677 to about $1,170. These are averages across different years, so treat the comparison as a direction, not a precise measure.

The same money buys a lot more space across the river

Here is the active new-townhome average in each submarket, from the same Vancouver Dwelling project tracking:

• Vancouver East: 964 sq ft, $1,128,665, about $1,170 per sq ft
• Burnaby: 1,199 sq ft, $1,124,454, about $940 per sq ft
• Coquitlam and Port Moody: 1,349 sq ft, $1,077,709, about $800 per sq ft
• Central Surrey and North Delta: 1,675 sq ft, $1,013,698, $605 per sq ft
• Langley and Cloverdale: 1,562 sq ft, $958,645, $614 per sq ft
• Abbotsford and Mission: 1,592 sq ft, $771,891, $485 per sq ft

Read the East Van and Burnaby rows together. The average price is almost identical, within about $4,000, but Burnaby gives you roughly 24% more space. Coquitlam and Port Moody cost about $51,000 less than East Van and give you about 40% more. Langley averages about $170,000 less and about 62% more.

So the price gap is real but it is not the main story. A move to Coquitlam can cost about the same as staying put. What changes is the square footage.

What my clients tell me: a longer drive for a better home

The data shows what is on offer. What I hear from clients explains why people take it. A lot of the buyers I work with now are fine with a longer drive to work if it gets them more space at home. Their reasoning is simple. You spend most of your waking time at home, evenings, weekends and, for many people, some of the workweek too, so an extra room and a bit of outdoor space matter more than a shorter commute.

That is my experience with the families I work with, not a survey result, and it does not describe everyone. Some buyers need to stay close to work, school or family, and for them East Vancouver is worth the smaller floor plan. But for the buyer who can trade 15 or 20 minutes in the car for a third bedroom and a real kitchen, Burnaby, Coquitlam and the Fraser Valley start to look very different on paper.

Outside Vancouver, there is usually more room to negotiate

One more thing I see with my clients: most projects outside the City of Vancouver tend to be more negotiable than the ones in East Van. Builders in Coquitlam, Surrey, Langley and Abbotsford are competing with a much larger pool of townhomes, and buyers often have more room to ask about pricing, upgrades, deposit structure or completion timing.

The tracking data points the same way, with a caveat. Completed, unsold townhomes (“standing inventory”) number 93 in Coquitlam and Port Moody, 143 in Central Surrey and North Delta, 75 in Langley and Cloverdale and 117 in Abbotsford and Mission, against 33 in Vancouver East and only 10 in Burnaby. More unsold homes means a builder with more reason to deal. Burnaby is the exception, so I would not assume the same flexibility there, and a few East Van projects with unsold homes (Templeton Living has 22) may also have some room. Every project is different, and I can’t promise a discount on any specific home, so ask your agent what is realistic on the one you like.

It is not resale prices pushing people out

East Vancouver resale townhomes are not the expensive option. The August 2026 attached-home benchmark in Vancouver East was $985,400, down 7.5% year over year, and about $43,400 below the Metro Vancouver townhouse benchmark of $1,028,800, according to Nest Presales. That figure includes duplexes, so it is not an exact match for the new-townhome average, but the gap is clear: new product in East Van is priced roughly 15% above resale attached homes while being compact.

The resale market is also not starved. Metro Vancouver townhomes sit at about 5.5 months of inventory, which is balanced (Mortgage Sandbox). East Van had 135 active attached listings in August with a sales-to-active ratio of 9.6%.

My read: upsizers are not priced out of East Van townhomes in general. They are boxed out of new, family-sized ones. And demand for them is there. Rennie Intelligence’s 2026 survey, as reported by Luxmore News, found over half of Metro Vancouver end-user buyers prefer townhomes, and the three-bedroom family home is the market’s sweet spot.

The pipeline is the real bottleneck

This is where the data is most lopsided. My tracking of the contemplated (not yet launched) townhome pipeline:

• Vancouver East: 2 projects, 39 homes
• Burnaby: 7 projects, 138 homes
• Coquitlam and Port Moody: 37 projects, 2,437 homes
• Central Surrey and North Delta: 54 projects, 4,568 homes
• Langley and Cloverdale: 81 projects, 5,819 homes
• Abbotsford and Mission: 32 projects, 1,540 homes

Those counts include applications that are stalled or withdrawn. In East Van, one of the two sites (19 homes on Queens Avenue) is approved and the other (20 homes on Chambers Street) is listed as rejected or withdrawn. So the realistic East Van pipeline is closer to 19 homes than 39.

The data does not say why the pipeline is so thin, and I won’t pretend to know from it alone. My working explanation is that ground-oriented homes need sites that can be rezoned and built at a price that works, and East Van has few of them. Treat that as my read, not a finding. The outcome is the missing middle: plenty of condos, plenty of detached houses, and very few homes in between.

A project I know well

I can point to one that shows what the difference looks like. The Grove, by Foster Living in West Coquitlam, is a 49-home townhome launch from my 2025 track record. In my tracking, 39 are sold, and the average home is 1,459 square feet at about $1,278,000, or $876 per square foot. That is about 51% more space than the East Van average for roughly $149,000 more. I am not saying it is the right fit for everyone, but it shows what the extra money buys.

Further out, Anthem’s Wood & Water in Fleetwood, Surrey (2020 to 2022) was another townhome launch on my list.

What this means for buyers

First, decide what you are really buying: location or space. If East Vancouver is non-negotiable, expect compact homes and a thin pipeline, and watch for the few larger-format projects, because they sell through.

Second, compare per-square-foot value, not just the headline price. A home at $1.13M that is 964 square feet and one at $1.08M that is 1,349 square feet are different purchases.

Third, buying presale means a 2 to 3 year wait. Ask who is building, how deposits are held, and what the construction financing looks like.

Fourth, do not forget resale. East Van attached homes are currently cheaper than the Metro benchmark and the market is balanced. For a buyer who wants to stay near Commercial Drive or Main Street, resale may beat new.

For more on the current market backdrop, see my September market split post.

Want first access?

If you are weighing East Vancouver against Burnaby, Coquitlam or the Fraser Valley, I can show you which townhome projects are launching and which are worth waiting for. Register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca and I will send you launches and pricing as they open.

Data note: Vancouver Dwelling project tracking of Metro Vancouver townhomes (active, sold-out and contemplated projects), as of October 11, 2026, with project data supplied by Zonda Enterprise Canada. Averages are project averages. Resale figures are from the public sources named above.