September’s Vancouver Numbers Split the Market in Two. Here Is What It Means for Presale Buyers

Greater Vancouver Realtors released its September numbers last week, and the headline is easy to summarize: sales were down 8.4% from a year ago, and prices slipped again. But that headline hides the most important thing in the report. Metro Vancouver is now two different markets.

Houses and townhouses are holding steady. Condos are not. If you are thinking about buying a presale, almost all of which are condos, that split is the part you need to understand.

The September numbers at a glance

According to the GVR September 2026 stats package, there were 1,717 residential sales across Metro Vancouver last month, down from 1,875 in September 2025. That is 25% below the 10-year average for September.

The MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark price is now $1,075,900. That is down 5.5% from a year ago and 0.6% from August. By property type:

• Detached: $1,784,700, down 7.3% year over year
• Townhouse: $1,016,700, down 4.7% year over year
• Apartment: $682,500, down 6.2% year over year

New listings fell 10.3% to 5,852, and total active listings fell 4% to 16,394. That is still 24.3% above the 10-year average, which means buyers have plenty to choose from.

The real story: condo sales fell almost 19%

Here is where it gets interesting. Detached sales actually rose 4.2% from last September, to 575. Townhouse and other attached sales were flat, at 358. The entire decline came from apartments, where sales fell 18.6%, from 954 to 777.

GVR chief economist Andrew Lis put it plainly. He said the weakness “is contained to the sizeable apartment segment,” and that the data is consistent with end-users driving the market while “investor-driven demand awaits more favourable market conditions.”

That matches what we have been seeing on the ground. Apartments usually make up about half of all sales in this region. In September they were about 45%. Year to date, apartment sales are down 12% from the same period in 2025, while detached sales are up about 1%. The people buying right now are mostly people who plan to live in what they buy. The investors who used to buy condos to rent out have largely stepped back, for reasons we covered in our look at Metro Vancouver’s unsold condo inventory.

Condo prices are back to where they were in 2021

The number that stood out most to me is not in the press release. It is in the tables. The apartment benchmark price across Greater Vancouver is down 11.1% over three years, and up just 0.3% over five years. In other words, a typical resale condo costs roughly what it did in the fall of 2021.

Some areas have corrected more than others. Over the past year, apartment benchmarks fell 9.1% in Richmond, 9.0% in Port Coquitlam, 8.3% in Burnaby South, 7.5% in New Westminster and 7.3% in Coquitlam. Vancouver East and Vancouver West were both down 5.2%. North Vancouver held up best among the larger markets, down 3.2%.

What the sales-to-listings ratio is telling us

GVR tracks one more number worth watching: the sales-to-active-listings ratio. Historically, prices face downward pressure when that ratio stays below 12%, and upward pressure when it stays above 20%.

In September it was 10.9% overall. Apartments were at 11.4% and detached homes at 9.7%. Townhouses were the only segment above the line, at 12.2%. Put another way, at September’s pace it would take about nine and a half months to sell everything currently listed. That is a buyer’s market by any standard.

Lis also pointed out something that cuts the other way. Inventory is now trending lower, and that is keeping prices from falling quickly. The declines are small each month, about 3% across all segments since January. But they keep adding up.

What this means for presale buyers

First, use resale as your benchmark. A presale condo is only good value if it makes sense next to what you could buy today. With the typical resale apartment at $682,500 and back at 2021 levels, any presale should be priced with a clear reason for its premium: a better location, a newer building, a stronger developer, or real incentives. If the gap is too wide, negotiate or walk away.

Second, think about when you will close, not just when you sign. A presale you buy today will likely complete in 2028 to 2030. Very few new projects are launching, which means far fewer new condos will be completing in those years. That is a very different supply picture from today’s, where finished units are competing for a thin pool of buyers.

Third, pay attention to townhouses. They are the one segment where buyers and sellers are close to balanced, and townhouse sales held level with last year even as condo sales fell. If you are a family planning to live in your home, presale townhouses deserve a close look.

Finally, keep an eye on rates. Fixed mortgage rates have been climbing, and that affects what you will qualify for at completion, not just today. We wrote about that risk in why a rate hold does not help your 2028 presale completion.

The bottom line

September confirmed what the market has been saying all year. Detached and townhouse buyers are mostly people buying homes to live in, and that part of the market is steady. The condo market is still working through the absence of investors, and prices there have quietly given back five years of gains.

For the right buyer, that is not a warning sign. It is the best negotiating position we have seen in years. If you want help finding the presales that are priced right against today’s resale market, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. I compare every launch against current resale benchmarks before I bring it to clients.

Carney Just Signalled Immigration Will Rise Again. Here Is Why That Matters for Your 2029 Presale

For three years, Ottawa’s message on immigration has been simple: fewer newcomers, fewer students, fewer temporary workers. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled that chapter may be ending.

In an interview with The New York Times, reported by The Canadian Press on September 29, Carney said Canada’s immigration system is “back under control,” and that the question now is when to resume “some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada.”

No new numbers were announced. But for anyone weighing a Metro Vancouver presale right now, this matters more than most headlines do, because a presale is a bet on what the market looks like three or four years from now. Population is the single biggest driver of housing demand in this region, and the federal dial on it may be about to turn.

What Carney actually said, and what he did not

It is worth being precise here, because this story is already being overstated online. Carney did not announce higher targets. He did not say when an increase would begin, or how large it would be. What changed is the tone. Each of the last three federal immigration plans was built around cuts, especially to temporary residents such as international students and foreign workers. This is the clearest sign yet that Ottawa sees that correction as largely done.

The real answer comes soon. By law, the federal government must table its next Immigration Levels Plan on or before November 1, and that plan will set targets for 2027 through 2029. As immigration lawyer Colin Singer notes in his breakdown, the key question is whether a “controlled increase” means higher permanent resident targets, a slower pace of temporary resident cuts, or both.

Where the numbers stand today

The current plan, released in November 2025, holds permanent resident admissions flat at 380,000 a year from 2026 to 2028, and cuts new temporary resident arrivals from 385,000 in 2026 to 370,000 in 2027 and 2028. It also aims to bring the temporary resident share of Canada’s population below 5% by the end of 2027.

The effect is showing up clearly in the data. According to Statistics Canada’s September 23 release, Canada’s population was 41,798,407 on July 1, 2026. That is growth of just 0.5% over the year, which immigration.ca notes is the smallest July to July increase since 1944/45. The number of non-permanent residents fell to 2,779,774, about 6.7% of the population, still above the 5% goal.

British Columbia is right in the middle of this. B.C.’s population was 5,710,598 on July 1, up just 0.1% for the quarter, while the number of non-permanent residents in the province fell another 1.4% to 465,514.

Why Metro Vancouver felt the cuts first

Most temporary residents rent. When that inflow slowed at the same time a wave of new condos and purpose-built rentals completed, the rental market loosened quickly.

CMHC’s 2026 Mid-Year Rental Market Update puts numbers on it. Vancouver’s apartment vacancy rate hit 3.7% in 2025, above the 2% to 3% range CMHC now estimates as “balanced” for this market. Asking rents for two-bedroom apartments in Vancouver were roughly 10% lower at the end of 2025 than at the start of 2024. CMHC also models population change as a slight drag on Vancouver household growth in 2026, the only major factor pulling in that direction.

That rental softness is a big part of why investors stepped back from presales, and why so many finished units are sitting unsold. We covered that side of the story in Metro Vancouver’s $4.4 billion unsold condo problem.

Why this matters more for presale buyers than anyone else

Here is the part I think most people are missing. If you buy a presale today, you are not buying into today’s market. You are buying into the market that exists when your building completes, likely in 2029 or 2030.

Two things are lining up for that window. First, supply is shrinking. CMHC says competition from investor-owned rental condos “will decline in the coming years as condominium apartment completions are projected to fall sharply.” Very few new projects are launching today, which means very few will complete in 2029 and 2030. Second, if Ottawa does move toward a controlled increase in population, demand would be rising into that thinner supply, not falling.

That combination, lower future supply and steadier demand, tends to reward buyers who commit early. It is also exactly the opposite of how the market feels right now, which is why prices and incentives are where they are.

The case for caution

I do not want to oversell this. There are real reasons to be careful.

Not everyone agrees an increase is the right move. The C.D. Howe Institute’s immigration targets council, which includes former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, recommended in August that Ottawa keep cutting temporary resident numbers. Even if permanent targets rise, temporary resident numbers are likely to stay tightly managed, and temporary residents are a major source of rental demand. A “controlled increase” may look very different from 2022.

Population is also only one input. Interest rates, construction costs, the B.C. election on October 24, and the inventory of unsold units all matter. A shift in federal tone does not change any of those overnight.

What buyers should do with this

If you are buying to live in, this is a reason not to wait for a bottom that may already be forming. The best negotiating leverage tends to exist before the narrative changes, not after.

If you are buying as an investor, focus on what renters will want in 2030, not what is sitting empty today. CMHC found that vacancies are highest in buildings completed after 2020 and in units near post-secondary institutions, while family-sized units remain in tighter supply. That tells you where the renter demand actually is.

Either way, watch the November 1 levels plan closely. If permanent targets rise and the temporary resident cuts slow, it confirms the turn. If targets stay flat, the current buyer’s market likely has more room to run.

The bottom line

Carney did not change Canada’s immigration policy last week. He told us which direction it is likely to move next. For Metro Vancouver presale buyers, that matters because you are buying a home that will be delivered into a market with far less new supply, and possibly more people looking for a place to live.

If you want help finding the projects that make sense for that 2029 and 2030 window, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. I will send you new launches, incentives and the numbers behind them before they hit the market.

UBS Just Called Vancouver One of the World’s Weakest Housing Markets. Here Is What That Actually Means for Buyers

“World’s weakest housing market” is a headline designed to scare people. If you own a Vancouver condo, it probably did. If you are trying to buy one, I would read it very differently.

Last week, Swiss bank UBS released its 2026 Global Real Estate Bubble Index, which tracks home prices in 23 major cities. Vancouver and Toronto came in at the bottom for price growth. Both recorded inflation-adjusted price declines of roughly 10 percent over the past year, while prices across the other cities were broadly flat. At the top, Seoul, Lisbon, Madrid and Hong Kong each rose around 10 percent.

Here is what the report actually says, what it does not say, and why I think it is more useful to buyers than to anyone else.

What UBS actually found

The headline number is the one-year drop. According to UBS’s own release, real house prices in Vancouver and Toronto fell by roughly 10 percent, the steepest declines of any city in the study. Frankfurt and Munich also fell, but more moderately.

The longer view is just as striking. As reported by the Financial Post and CTV News, Vancouver prices are down about 20 percent from their 2022 peak, and Toronto’s are down about 30 percent. Toronto was UBS’s strongest market for eight straight years between 2014 and 2022. Four years later it sits at the bottom.

UBS’s summary of Vancouver, quoted by BNN Bloomberg, points to elevated inventory, slower economic growth, inflation concerns and the risk of further rate hikes as the weights on near-term prices. It also notes home sales are sitting at a 25-year low.

“Weakest” does not mean “about to crash”

This is the part the headlines skip. The index is a bubble risk index, and UBS actually lowered its risk rating for both Canadian cities. Vancouver and Toronto are now rated “moderate” risk, down from “elevated” in 2024. The only two cities rated high risk this year are Zurich and Tokyo.

Put simply, “weakest” describes price momentum over the past year. It is not a prediction. A market that has already corrected 20 percent has less air left in it than a market that has not. UBS’s view is that Vancouver’s froth has been working its way out, not building up.

One more detail worth knowing: UBS measures prices in real terms, meaning after inflation. The drop you would see on an actual price tag is smaller than the headline 10 percent. For context, the Financial Post reports Metro Vancouver’s benchmark home price was about $1.08 million in August, per Greater Vancouver Realtors.

Vancouver is still expensive. Just less so.

Nobody should read this report and conclude Vancouver is cheap. CMHC deputy chief economist Aled ab Iorwerth told the Financial Post that prices here remain expensive by international standards, even after the drop.

The UBS numbers bear that out in a specific way. According to BNN Bloomberg’s summary of the report, a Vancouver renter would need to pay rent for about 23 years to equal the price of a comparable 650-square-foot apartment. That is far below Zurich (46 years) or Geneva (40), but it still means owning costs meaningfully more than renting month to month. On the income side, the Financial Post reports Vancouver sits toward the more affordable end of UBS’s price-to-income measure, at roughly five years of average skilled-worker income for that same 650-square-foot home.

So the fair summary is this: Vancouver has gone from extremely overvalued to merely expensive. For a buyer, that is a real improvement, not a bargain.

Why this matters more for presale buyers than resale buyers

The UBS index measures the whole housing market, but the weakness has been sharpest in new condos. As I covered in Metro Vancouver’s $4.4 Billion Unsold Condo Problem, thousands of finished units are sitting unsold across the region, mostly larger and pricier homes. CMHC reports condo starts in Vancouver just had their weakest first half since 2011.

That creates two very different situations depending on where you stand.

If you are buying now, a weak market is leverage. Developers carrying standing inventory are negotiating on price, deposits and incentives in ways they would not have considered in 2021 or 2022. Sales at a 25-year low mean you are competing with far fewer buyers.

If you bought a presale near the peak and are closing soon, the same weakness is a risk. A 20 percent decline from peak can mean an appraisal at completion that comes in below your contract price, which leaves a gap you have to cover in cash. If that is you, talk to your mortgage broker now, not the month before closing.

The warning inside the report

There is one line of caution buyers should take seriously. The Financial Post quotes CMHC’s ab Iorwerth saying that if the economy recovers strongly over the next three years, he worries housing supply will not be there, and the market “could go into a bubble condition in a few years” if building does not continue.

That lines up with what I see in the presale pipeline. Weak prices today are discouraging the construction of the homes we will need in 2029 and 2030. When demand comes back, it will return to a market with fewer new condos than the last cycle. Weakness now and tightness later are two sides of the same coin.

What buyers should do with this

Do not treat “weakest in the world” as a reason to panic or a reason to rush. Treat it as a reason to negotiate.

If you are an end user planning to live in the home for years, this is one of the better entry points Metro Vancouver has offered in a long time. You have inventory to choose from, sellers who need to move units, and a market that UBS now rates as less risky than it was two years ago.

If you are investing, be more careful. UBS notes that in most cities it studied, the annual cost of owning a newly bought 650-square-foot home now exceeds 40 percent of a skilled worker’s gross income, and that higher-for-longer rates are likely to cap price gains in the near term. The easy appreciation years are not coming back on a short timeline.

Either way, the questions to ask are specific: how long has this unit been on the market, what has the price history been, what is the developer’s standing inventory, and what does the lender require at completion.

The bottom line

UBS did not say Vancouver’s housing market is broken. It said prices have fallen faster here than almost anywhere else, and that the bubble risk has eased as a result. For people who own, that stings. For people who have been priced out for a decade, it may be the opening they have been waiting for, as long as they buy for the long term and negotiate hard.

If you want help finding the projects where that negotiating room is real, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. I track standing inventory, incentives and price history across Metro Vancouver so you can make an offer with the full picture.

Opinion: Eby’s Unsold Condo Tax Punishes the Last People Still Willing to Build Homes You Can Own

This is an opinion piece. It reflects my views as a presale specialist who has worked with Metro Vancouver buyers and developers since 2014.

Three months ago, David Eby stood beside Prime Minister Mark Carney and announced a plan to help finance the purchase of more than 2,200 empty condos across BC. Critics on all sides called it a bailout for developers. Eby said it was not, and that developers would be taking losses.

On September 22, he called a snap election for October 24. Three days later, standing in Burnaby with a condo tower under construction behind him, he announced the opposite approach: a new tax on those same developers.

I understand the politics. I do not understand the policy. And I think the people who will pay for it are not the developers he is aiming at. It is the buyers who come next.

What Eby is actually proposing

Here are the facts before the opinions. According to Daily Hive and The Canadian Press, the BC NDP’s “Unsold Condo Tax” would apply to newly completed strata condos left empty and unsold for more than a year. It would start at 2 percent and rise by 1 percentage point for every additional year a unit stays unsold. The party says it could bring about 5,000 condos into use, citing a September Real Property Data report that values Metro Vancouver’s unsold inventory at roughly $4.4 billion.

He also promised to double the Speculation and Vacancy Tax for domestic owners from 1 to 2 percent, and to raise it to 5 percent for foreign owners.

What the announcement did not include, per Daily Hive: an implementation date, how a unit’s taxable value would be set, any exemptions, or a maximum rate. That is a lot of blanks for a tax that could decide whether a tower gets built.

The premise is wrong

Eby’s pitch is that developers are sitting on finished condos “waiting for prices to go up.” I have been in this market a long time, and that is not what I see.

Nobody holding 300 empty units in Burnaby is waiting for a price spike. They are paying interest on construction loans that were supposed to be paid off at completion. They are paying strata fees, property tax, and insurance on every empty suite. Holding inventory is already the most expensive thing a developer can do. That is exactly why we have seen flash sales, quiet price cuts, and incentives piling up all year. The market is already doing what Eby says he wants. It is just slower than an election calendar.

The units that are stuck are mostly the large, expensive ones. As I wrote in Metro Vancouver’s $4.4 Billion Unsold Condo Problem, three-bedroom condos have the highest unsold rate of any common unit type, and more than 80 percent of unsold units are priced above $1 million. Those units were priced off 2022 land and construction costs. A tax does not change what they cost to build. It only changes who absorbs the loss, and how quickly.

Who would want to build now?

This is the question that matters most, and I cannot find a good answer.

Think about it from a lender’s side. To finance a condo tower in this region, a developer typically needs to presell a large share of the units before the bank releases construction money. The bank then carries risk for three to five years until completion. Eby is now telling every lender in BC that if the market softens at the end of that cycle, the province will add a new and growing annual tax on whatever is left.

A rational lender prices that in. That means tighter presale thresholds, higher rates, or simply saying no. And the projects that were marginal already, which in 2026 is most of them, stop being projects at all.

We are not starting from a healthy place. CMHC’s Fall 2026 Housing Supply Report, as summarized by STOREYS, found that condo apartment starts in Vancouver fell another 40 percent in the first half of this year, the weakest first half since 2011. Rental now makes up about 60 percent of starts. The ownership pipeline is already shrinking. This tax gives the people still willing to build for owners one more reason to stop.

The consequences nobody is talking about

It could hurt the presale buyers who are closing right now. If developers are pushed into fire sales, the first people hurt are buyers in the same building who signed at earlier prices. When comparable units sell at a discount, appraisals at completion can come in low. A low appraisal means the buyer has to bring more cash to close. I expect some of the families this tax is meant to help would feel that squeeze first.

It could push inventory to funds, not first-time buyers. When a developer needs to clear 200 units fast to avoid a tax bill, the quickest buyer is not a young couple waiting on mortgage approval. It is an institutional investor buying in bulk at a discount. The homes get “used,” which checks Eby’s box, but they become rentals owned by funds instead of starter homes owned by families.

It will be priced into every future launch. Developers do not absorb new risks forever. They build them into pro formas. The cost of a possible tax on unsold units shows up as higher prices per square foot at the next launch, or as a project that pivots to purpose-built rental, where this tax does not apply. Either way, the buyer pays.

It adds policy risk to a market that runs on certainty. Presales work because a buyer, a lender, and a developer all agree today on something that will exist in four years. Every surprise tax announced in the middle of that cycle makes the next agreement harder to reach.

What this means for the next generation

For most of my career, a presale condo was how a young person in this region got onto the property ladder. A 10 to 20 percent deposit spread over time, a few years to save, and a home at the end of it. That path is already narrowing. When 60 percent of what gets built is rental, the default future for someone graduating today is renting for life, with a landlord that is increasingly a pension fund or REIT.

I do not think that is the future Eby wants. But I think it is the future this kind of policy produces. You cannot tax the ownership pipeline and expect it to grow.

The case for the tax, in fairness

To be fair, the other side has an argument. Supporters would say 5,000 brand-new homes sitting empty during a housing crisis is indefensible, and that a clear penalty speeds up price discovery that would otherwise drag on for years. Lower prices on existing units do help buyers who can close today. And if the revenue really goes to affordable housing, some people will be better off. I do not dismiss that. I just think it trades a short-term price cut on 5,000 units for fewer units built across the next decade, and that is a bad trade for the people who have not bought yet.

What buyers should do now

Do not panic, and do not assume this becomes law. It is a campaign promise, the election is October 24, and there are no details yet. If you are shopping standing inventory, you already have leverage, and uncertainty may give you a little more. If you are closing on a presale in the next year, talk to your mortgage broker now about what happens if your appraisal comes in below your purchase price. And if you are thinking about a new launch, ask the developer and the lender directly how they are planning for policy risk.

The bottom line

In June, the answer was to help buy developers’ unsold condos. In September, with an election called, the answer is to tax them. Housing policy that changes direction with the campaign calendar is exactly the kind of uncertainty that stops homes from getting built. The buyers who pay for that are the ones who have not entered the market yet.

If you want straight answers on how this and other policy changes affect a specific project you are considering, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. I will keep tracking what is promised, what gets passed, and what it means for your purchase.

BC Pauses Its Most Unpopular New Tax, and What It Means for Metro Vancouver Presale and Condo Buyers

On September 18, BC Premier David Eby announced the province is pausing a tax change that had drawn more public pushback than almost anything else in this year’s provincial budget. The planned expansion of the Provincial Sales Tax to a range of professional services, set to take effect October 1, is now on hold. For most British Columbians this reads as budget-page news. For anyone who owns or is about to own a condo in Metro Vancouver, it is more personal than that, because one of the services on the list was strata management, the fee every condo owner already pays every month.

What was actually about to happen on October 1

BC’s 2026 budget proposed extending the 7% PST to several professional services that had never carried it before: accounting and bookkeeping, security and private investigation, and architectural, engineering and geoscience services, the last group taxed on 30 percent of the price rather than the full amount. It also captured what the government called non-residential real estate services, a category that includes commissions on buying and selling non-residential property, rental property management, and strata management services.

That last item is the one worth pausing on. Strata management fees are built into the monthly strata fee on effectively every condo and townhome in the province, presale completions included. Adding 7% PST on top of what strata corporations already pay their management companies would have flowed straight into higher monthly fees for owners, with no input tax credit available to soften it, since BC’s PST does not work the way GST does for most businesses paying it.

Why this became BC’s most unpopular tax proposal in years

The province’s own legislative process ended up documenting just how unpopular this was. The Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, in its report on 2027 budget consultations, noted it had received nearly 400 presentations and more than 1,100 written submissions from across BC. Among its 81 recommendations, the committee explicitly told the government to repeal the planned PST expansion to professional services.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business told the committee that 80 percent of the businesses it surveyed opposed the expansion, and 72 percent said they intended to pass the added cost straight on to customers. The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade called it a new tax on tax on the services businesses rely on every day. The core objection from most of these groups was structural: BC’s PST has no broad system of input tax credits, so it tends to stack at every stage a service touches a project, an effect critics call tax cascading. The BC Conservatives seized on the committee’s finding and kept pressing the government publicly to scrap the change.

The line that mattered most for real estate

Buried in that same debate was a warning specific to housing. The BC Real Estate Association told the committee that applying PST to commercial and non-residential real estate services could raise costs throughout the development process and make some housing projects harder to finance. Architects, engineers, and geoscientists are exactly the professionals developers pay through a project’s design and permitting phase, well before a single unit sells. A new tax layered onto those fees does not stay with the developer. It works its way into land economics and, eventually, into what a project needs to charge per square foot to pencil out.

What actually changed on September 18

The government is not repealing the expansion outright. It is pausing it through a temporary regulation, and the framing matters. “There’s a time to stay the course and there’s a time to adjust. This is a time to adjust,” said Premier Eby, tying the delay explicitly to the ongoing Canada-US trade dispute rather than to the domestic backlash. Finance Minister Josie Osborne said the pause would help businesses and local governments manage costs during a period of economic uncertainty. The province estimates the pause saves people, local governments, and businesses roughly $260 million in the 2026-27 fiscal year, against original budget projections that had this tax bringing in $261 million in year one, rising to $534 million and then $563 million in the two years after.

The distinction between paused and repealed is not a technicality. A temporary regulation can be lifted once the trade war Eby referenced eases, which means this tax has not disappeared so much as been shelved pending conditions outside the government’s control.

What this means for presale and condo buyers

If you already own or are completing on a condo, your strata fees just avoided an increase that had nothing to do with your building’s actual operating costs. That is real, immediate relief, and it is worth knowing why your strata council was watching this file closely this fall.

If you are shopping a presale right now, this removes one input-cost pressure that was sitting on developers’ pro formas heading into Q4, at a time when many projects are already struggling to pencil out under high construction costs and soft absorption. It is a small tailwind, not a reason on its own to expect lower prices, but it is one less thing pushing costs up.

The longer-term lesson is the one to actually act on. This is a pause tied to trade conditions, not a permanent change in BC’s tax direction, and the government has been explicit that revenue pressure has not gone away. If you are budgeting a very long hold, factor in the possibility that professional-services PST, or something like it, resurfaces once the current trade dispute resolves. Policy uncertainty is itself a cost, and the buyers who do well over a five or ten year hold are the ones who do not assume today’s exemptions are permanent.

The bottom line

BC just pulled back from its most contested tax measure of the year, and condo owners and presale buyers are among the more direct beneficiaries, mainly through strata fees and development costs that were about to get more expensive for no operational reason. But paused is not repealed. Keep an eye on this file, because the pressure that created it in the first place has not gone anywhere.

If you want help thinking through how policy shifts like this factor into a specific project’s pricing or your own long-term ownership costs, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. We track the fine print so you do not have to.

The Fed Just Hiked for the First Time Since 2023: What a Hawkish Turn Could Mean for Metro Vancouver Presale Buyers

On September 16 the U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point to a range of 3.75 to 4 percent, its first hike in more than three years. The vote was unanimous, 12 to 0. Two days later, odds that the Bank of Canada follows with its own hike on October 28 have swung to roughly a coin flip, a sharp reversal from the 94 percent odds of a hold that markets were pricing just weeks ago. Nothing has actually changed yet in Canada. But the ground underneath the “rates are done rising” story that has comforted presale buyers all year just shifted, and it is worth understanding why before you assume the next move is a cut.

What actually happened on September 16

The Fed’s decision was driven by inflation the committee described as “elevated,” with energy prices doing much of the damage. The committee’s updated projections point to the possibility of another increase before the year is out. This was not a close call or a surprise dissent. Every voting member agreed, which tells you the concern about inflation is broad-based within the Fed, not a minority view being outvoted.

For Canadian buyers, a U.S. rate decision is not automatically a Canadian rate decision. The Bank of Canada sets policy based on Canadian inflation and Canadian growth, not to shadow Washington. But the two economies share enough plumbing, energy markets, bond markets, a tariff dispute that is not going away, that a genuine U.S. policy pivot rarely stays contained on one side of the border for long.

Why the Bank of Canada suddenly looks like a coin flip

The Bank of Canada has held its policy rate at 2.25 percent for seven straight decisions, most recently on September 2. Going into that meeting, markets priced a hold at 94 percent odds. That comfortable consensus has cracked. With the October 28 decision still more than a month away, odds now sit close to even, tilted narrowly toward a hike as of this week according to LSEG Data and Analytics pricing cited by RBC senior economist Claire Fan.

The reason is not the Fed decision itself so much as what is driving it: persistently high global oil prices tied to the conflict involving Iran. The Bank of Canada’s own summary of deliberations from its September 2 meeting shows governing council was already worried last month that elevated oil prices were staying higher for longer than expected. The longer that continues, the greater the risk it spreads from gas pumps into broader inflation. Rising global bond yields, partly tied to concerns over U.S. government debt, are spilling into Government of Canada bond yields too, and lenders use those bond yields to price fixed mortgage rates directly.

The big banks do not agree, and that matters

Here is the part worth sitting with. Four of Canada’s biggest banks, BMO, CIBC, RBC, and TD, expect the policy rate to hold at 2.25 percent through the rest of 2026, with any hike pushed into 2027. Two others, National Bank and Scotiabank, expect the Bank of Canada to move to 2.50 percent as early as October and to 2.75 percent before the year is out. Desjardins deputy chief economist Randall Bartlett and Capital Economics’ Stephen Brown both say their base case remains no hike in October, but both describe it as a genuinely close call rather than a confident hold.

A genuine split among major bank economists is itself a signal. It means the comfortable assumption many presale buyers have been running on, that the rate story from here is flat or downward, is no longer the consensus. It is one live scenario among several, and the scenario where rates move up is now credible enough that serious economists are debating timing in months, not years.

What a hawkish turn would actually do to your numbers

Start with what has already moved. The 5-year Government of Canada bond yield, the benchmark lenders use to price fixed mortgage rates, sat at 3.42 percent as of the Bank of Canada’s September 2 decision, up from 3.08 percent three months earlier. Fixed rates can drift higher even without the Bank of Canada lifting the overnight rate at all, purely on bond market pricing.

If the Bank of Canada does hike in October, Canada’s prime rate, currently 4.45 percent across the major banks, would move to roughly 4.70 percent, and every variable-rate mortgage and line of credit tied to prime would follow immediately. If the more hawkish forecasts play out over the following year, some rate forecasters have prime drifting toward the mid-5 percent range by mid-2027. That is a scenario, not a prediction, and the economists closest to the decision still lean toward the Bank holding in October. But a year ago, a scenario where rates rise from here would have sounded implausible to most buyers. Today it is a live debate inside the institutions that set these rates.

What this means for presale buyers

If your completion is more than a year out, stop assuming the rate you see quoted today is a ceiling. Stress test your purchase at your current qualifying rate plus 1 and plus 2 percentage points, not just at today’s rate, and make sure the payment still works at the higher number. A rate hold, where available, only protects you for a matter of months, so it does very little for a 2028 or 2029 completion regardless of which way this week’s headlines point.

If you are weighing a fixed versus variable mortgage on a near-completion unit, the bond market has already started pricing in more caution on the fixed side, so do not assume fixed necessarily means fully immune to what happens between now and your closing date. And if a hawkish turn genuinely worries you, the honest hedge is not trying to time the Bank of Canada. It is buying something you can still comfortably afford if the more cautious forecasts turn out to be wrong.

The bottom line

Nothing changed in Canada on September 16. What changed is the confidence behind the assumption that nothing will. The Bank of Canada’s own economists are now debating a hike in weeks rather than dismissing one for years, and that uncertainty alone is worth building into your numbers before you sign.

If you want help stress testing a specific presale contract against a range of rate scenarios, or you want early access to new launches before they go public, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. We will run the math with you before you commit to anything.

Metro Vancouver’s $4.4 Billion Unsold Condo Problem, and What It Actually Means for Presale Buyers

A new report making the rounds this week puts a number on something Metro Vancouver presale buyers have felt for a while: developers are sitting on a mountain of finished condos nobody has bought. Real Property Data, a Vancouver analytics firm, estimates the region’s finished-but-unsold condo inventory is worth $4.4 billion. That is a striking figure on its own, but the detail underneath it is more useful to you than the headline number. This is not mostly a story about small investor units nobody wanted. It is a story about the expensive, larger homes at the top of the price sheet, and that changes what it means for anyone shopping presales right now.

The numbers behind the headline

Real Property Data’s $4.4 billion estimate is based on what comparable condos sold for in 2026. A separate analytics firm, Zonda Urban, independently counted just over 5,300 finished-but-unsold condos and townhomes across Metro Vancouver this week. Burnaby leads with 1,200 units, followed by Vancouver at 958, Richmond at 816, Surrey at 559, and the Coquitlam-Port Moody area at 543. More than 1,300 of these units are sitting in buildings that were completed at least two years ago, so this is not simply new stock still working through a normal sales cycle. It is aging, unsold inventory that developers are financing month after month while it waits for a buyer.

If that $4.4 billion figure looks familiar with a slightly different number attached, you may be thinking of an earlier report from Rennie, using CMHC and Zonda data back in April, that put the value at $4.6 billion. The two reports use different methodologies and snapshots in time, so treat them as two data points telling the same underlying story rather than a contradiction.

The surprising part: it is not the small units

Here is the detail that should reshape how you think about this. Darcy Rai, president of Real Property Data, found that larger condos of 1,500 square feet or more have a 41.6 percent unsold rate, compared with just 12.2 percent for units under 500 square feet. Three-bedroom condos have the highest unsold rate of any common unit type, at 27.3 percent, followed by two-bedroom units at 22.5 percent. One-bedroom condos sit at a comparatively low 13.7 percent. Andy Yan, director of the City program at Simon Fraser University, found a similar pattern from a different angle: more than 80 percent of the unsold units are priced above $1 million.

The explanation is straightforward once you see it. For the better part of a decade, presale buildings sold from the bottom of the price sheet up. Smaller, cheaper units moved first because more buyers could commit to them years ahead of completion based on a floor plan. What is left standing today is the larger, pricier end of each project, the units that fewer buyers were willing to gamble on sight unseen.

Why the expensive units are the ones stuck

Construction costs are the other half of this. Jon Bennest, vice-president of product development at Zonda Urban, points out that concrete highrises cost more to build than woodframe construction, which pushed developers to price those units at a premium to make the projects viable. Some Burnaby highrise units launched near the 2022 peak sold for as much as $1,400 a square foot. An end user shopping a comparable new condo in that same location today would likely pay closer to $1,000 to $1,100 a square foot. That gap is exactly why the units priced at yesterday’s peak are the ones sitting empty now, and it is also why some developers have quietly run flash sales and limited-time price reductions rather than a broad, public repricing.

Which developers are holding the most inventory

Real Property Data’s building-level breakdown names specific holders. Ledingham McAllister holds 722 finished-and-unsold units across six completed towers in Burnaby and Coquitlam, including 266 of 352 released units still unsold at Icon at Southgate City, a 46-storey tower completed about a year ago. Anthem Properties holds the next-highest count at 458 units. Westbank holds the highest unsold value of any single project, with 150 of 331 units unsold at The Butterfly downtown, though Westbank disputes that figure, telling Postmedia its unsold rate there is under 20 percent and that its remaining inventory is mostly one and two-bedroom homes starting around $1 million.

This is worth sitting with if you are considering a resale or an assignment in one of these buildings. A developer carrying hundreds of unsold units across multiple towers has real financing pressure, and financing pressure is exactly what produces flash sales, but it can also be a signal to do extra homework on that specific project’s lender relationships before you sign anything.

Where this overhang concentrates, and why

Bennest also flagged a geographic pattern that connects directly to Metro Vancouver’s transit-oriented building boom. A large share of the unsold inventory sits in highrise towers near SkyTrain corridors that saw heavy development over the past eight years, including Brentwood, Lougheed, Metrotown, Edmonds, and Burquitlam in Burnaby and Coquitlam, plus a concentration near Richmond’s Capstan Station on the Canada Line. BC’s transit-oriented density law (Bill 47) is still working through an uneven rollout two years after its compliance deadline, and this unsold inventory is the flip side of that same story: the towers already built near transit in the last cycle are exactly where the biggest oversupply of expensive units now sits.

What this means for buyers

If you are shopping a larger unit, a two or three-bedroom in particular, you are looking at the exact segment where developers have the least leverage and the most incentive to negotiate. That means room to ask about price adjustments, deposit structure, or upgrade credits on standing inventory in a way that was unthinkable during the 2021 to 2022 presale frenzy. It also means you should ask direct questions about how long a specific unit has been on the market and whether the building has had prior price reductions, since that history tells you more about your negotiating room than the listing price does. On the flip side, if a project’s inventory looks especially concentrated with one heavily exposed developer, treat that as a prompt to check the builder’s financial standing and the project’s lender before committing, not as a reason to avoid the deal outright.

The bottom line

The $4.4 billion figure making the rounds this week is real, but the useful story is underneath it: this is a story about pricey, large-format units built at peak construction costs, concentrated in specific towers and specific developers, not a broad collapse across every price point. For a presale buyer, that distinction is the difference between panic and opportunity.

If you want help figuring out whether a specific standing-inventory unit or new launch is priced for today’s market, or you want early notice before new presales go public, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. We track the inventory data and the fine print so you can negotiate from a position of knowledge.

The Bank of Canada Held Rates Again. Here Is Why That Does Not Help Your 2028 Presale Completion

On September 2 the Bank of Canada held its overnight rate at 2.25 per cent. The Bank Rate stayed at 2.5 per cent, the deposit rate at 2.20 per cent, and the policy rate has now been unchanged since October 2025, when it came down from 2.50 per cent.

The commentary around the decision has been what you would expect. Mortgage brokers pointed out that discounted fixed rates are still available below 4 per cent. Industry associations called the hold a signal of stability. The standard advice arrived on cue: get a rate hold, lock in today’s pricing for up to 120 days, protect yourself from volatility.

That advice is fine if you are buying a resale condo in Kitsilano and closing in six weeks. If you are buying a Metro Vancouver presale that completes in 2028 or 2029, almost none of it applies to you, and I think the gap between the two situations is the single most underexplained thing in this market right now.

The rate hold everybody is discussing is one you cannot actually use

A rate hold is a lender’s commitment to honour a quoted rate for a fixed window, usually up to 120 days. Four months. That is the entire product.

Your presale completion is not in four months. It might be in thirty-six. When you sign a presale contract, you are agreeing to buy at a fixed price on a date the developer will confirm later, and you will arrange your mortgage close to that date, at whatever rates exist then. No lender will commit to a rate three years out, because no lender can price that risk.

So the September 2 hold tells you something about today’s borrowing environment. It tells you very little about the one you will actually borrow in. Presale buyers who feel reassured by a rate hold headline are reading a forecast that does not extend to their horizon.

What the decision does tell you is worth reading carefully. The Bank noted that the continuing conflict in the Middle East is keeping energy prices elevated, and that new U.S. tariffs and Canadian counter-measures followed the breakdown of trade talks. Headline CPI is running at 3.0 per cent. Unemployment edged down to 6.4 per cent in July, but the Bank still sees continued excess supply in the economy.

That is a central bank pinned between two risks it cannot resolve at once. Ratehub’s Jamie David framed it as the Bank having “little room to move aggressively in either direction.” Two decisions remain this year, on October 28 and December 9. Anyone telling you confidently what happens after that is guessing.

What actually determines the rate you complete at

Three things, and the policy rate is only loosely connected to the first.

Fixed mortgage rates track government bond yields, not the overnight rate. That is why fixed pricing can move in a week the Bank does nothing. As of the September decision, the lowest discounted five-year fixed was around 4.09 per cent, with two-year fixed near 3.89 per cent and three-year near 3.94 per cent. Where those sit in 2028 depends on where bond yields go, and bond yields will respond to the trade conflict and to energy prices as much as to anything the Bank announces.

Variable rates do follow the policy rate, through prime, which most major banks are holding at 4.45 per cent. The lowest discounted five-year variable was around 3.35 per cent at the September decision.

Your own qualifying position is the third piece, and it is the one you can control. Lenders qualify you at a rate above your contract rate under the federal stress test, and they re-underwrite you at completion, not at signing. Your income, your other debts, your credit and your down payment all get looked at again, years after you signed. I have seen more presale completions get difficult because a buyer’s income situation changed than because rates moved.

The question to ask instead

Not “where will rates be.” Nobody knows. The better question is: at what rate does this purchase stop working for me?

Take the purchase price, subtract your deposit, and run the payment at 5 per cent, at 6 per cent, at 7 per cent. If the number at 6 per cent makes you uncomfortable, you have learned something concrete and useful about the size of unit you should be shopping for. That exercise takes ten minutes and it is worth more than any forecast.

Then do the same for the deposit schedule. Most Metro Vancouver presales run 15 to 20 per cent staged over 6 to 18 months, though a number of projects are currently offering 10 per cent structures. Those instalments come due on contract dates regardless of what the Bank of Canada does.

If you want the mechanics of how completion, financing and contract dates fit together, the pages of a 200-page presale contract that actually matter covers the clauses involved, and presale versus completed new construction is the honest comparison if the financing timeline is what is bothering you. A completed home you can finance today sidesteps this entire problem.

Market Signals

The sale. On August 26 the Harvard Apartments at 1240 St. George Avenue in North Vancouver’s Central Lonsdale sold for $12,250,000, or $382,813 per unit at a 4.0 per cent cap rate, according to vancouvermarket.ca. It is a 32-suite, three-storey wood-frame walk-up built in 1970, on an 18,077 square foot corner lot directly across from Lions Gate Hospital, zoned RM-1 for medium-density apartment residential use. Cushman Wakefield listed and sold it.

A 4.0 per cent cap rate on 1970 wood-frame stock is aggressive. For comparison, the Twin Lakes townhome portfolio traded three weeks earlier at 4.7 per cent. I am not going to attach a storey count or an FSR to this site: RM-1 is what is on the record today, and the City of North Vancouver has an active planning process reimagining the Central Lonsdale corridor, so the density that will eventually govern sites like this is still being written. What the price tells you is that patient capital is buying the land under old rental buildings on the North Shore, and that is usually two to three cycles ahead of any presale launch.

Builder watch. Closer to home for presale buyers, Portwood Development 3 Limited Partnership and Portwood Development 4 Limited Partnership obtained CCAA protection on August 14, 2026 on application by affiliates of Woodbourne Canada Management Inc., which were owed roughly $125 million as of August 17. The debtors own Phases 3, 4 and 5 of Woodland Park, a five-phase Port Moody residential project originally assembled in 2018 for about $97.5 million. Phase 3 is roughly 3.28 acres at 1218 Cecile Drive with permits for about 158,000 square feet of multi-family rental. Phases 4 and 5 total about 13.65 acres, rezoned for residential, with 96 townhomes on them. PwC is the monitor, and it is asking the court to approve a sale process backed by a stalking horse bid.

Two details are instructive. First, the phases are legally interdependent: under the development agreement with the City of Port Moody, Phase 3 has to be materially advanced before much of Phases 4 and 5 can be occupied. A master-planned community is not five independent projects, and trouble in one phase can stall the ones you bought into. Second, the petitioners deliberately chose CCAA over receivership partly because receivership over the title nominee could have triggered purchaser rescission rights under B.C. real estate legislation. Even the lenders are now structuring around presale buyer protections. That is a real shift.

What this means for buyers

Stop treating the Bank of Canada calendar as your buying signal. Two decisions are left this year and neither will change the arithmetic of a 2028 completion.

Do this instead. Stress-test your own purchase at 6 and 7 per cent before you sign, not the rate you are quoted today. Map the deposit instalment dates onto your actual cash flow. Ask the developer’s sales team directly what happens to your completion date if the project slips, and read what the contract says rather than what you are told. Look at who is financing the project and how many phases the plan depends on, because Port Moody is a live reminder that phasing risk is real. And if the financing uncertainty is genuinely what is keeping you up, seriously consider completed inventory, where you can finance today at a rate you can actually see.

The buyers who do well in this market are not the ones who timed the Bank of Canada. They are the ones who bought something they could still afford if they were wrong about rates.

Considering a Metro Vancouver presale?

I track 481 developments across 14 cities, 265 of them selling right now, and I will run the completion math with you before you sign anything. If you want an honest read on a specific project, including its phasing and who is behind the financing, book a call or register for VIP presale access. No pitch, just the spreadsheet.

Up to $50,000 in GST Relief Now Turns on One Date, and Most Assignments Are on the Wrong Side of It

There is a new federal GST rebate for first-time home buyers on new homes, worth up to $50,000. It is real, it is now law, and most presale assignments on the market today cannot use it.

The reason is a single date, and it is not the date most people think it is. If you are selling an assignment, this has quietly shrunk your buyer pool. If you are buying one, it can be a $37,000 difference on the same unit.

What the rebate actually is

The first-time home buyers’ GST/HST rebate came in through Bill C-4, which received royal assent on 13 March 2026. For a qualifying first-time buyer using the home as their primary residence, it rebates:

• 100% of the GST on a new home priced up to $1 million.
• A reducing amount between $1 million and $1.5 million, tapering to nothing at the top of that band.
• Up to $50,000 in total.

On a $900,000 new home that is $45,000 that simply does not have to be paid. It is the largest single change to new-home affordability for first-time buyers in years.

The date that decides it

The rebate is available where the agreement of purchase and sale with the builder was entered into on or after 20 March 2025, and before 2031.

Be careful here, because there are two dates in circulation. The original proposal announced in May 2025 used 27 May 2025. The legislation as enacted moved it earlier, to agreements entered into after 19 March 2025. A great deal of commentary published during 2025 still quotes the May date and still ranks well in search. If you are checking your own eligibility against an article, check when the article was written.

Why assignments are caught

This is the part that matters for anyone trading assignments, and it follows from how an assignment actually works.

When you take an assignment you do not sign a new agreement with the builder. You step into the original buyer’s existing agreement and complete on its terms. That agreement, with its original date, is the one the rebate looks at.

So the contract date travels with the unit. If the first buyer signed with the developer in 2023 or 2024, the agreement predates the cutoff, and an assignee completing in 2026 is buying into a contract that cannot access the rebate. It does not matter that the assignee is a first-time buyer, that it is their principal residence, or that the price is well under $1 million. They meet every personal test and still get nothing.

There is also an anti-avoidance rule, so the obvious workaround does not work either. You cannot tear up a pre-cutoff agreement and sign a fresh one with the builder in order to qualify.

The same unit, two contract dates

Take the Burnaby one-bedroom I use in the presale assignment guide: a $749,900 contract with $149,980 in deposits. GST on the developer’s price is 5%, which is $37,495.

Same suite, same buyer, same price. The only difference is when someone else signed a contract years earlier.

If you are selling an assignment

Your competition is the developer’s remaining inventory, and that inventory is now signed under post-cutoff contracts. A first-time buyer comparing your 2023-contract assignment against a similar new release is comparing a unit with GST payable against one where the GST may come back.

That is a real gap on a sub-$1 million unit, and it lands on exactly the buyer segment most likely to be looking at an entry-level presale. Price accordingly, and do not be surprised when a first-time buyer walks.

If you are buying an assignment

Ask for the date on the original contract of purchase and sale before you negotiate, not after. It is a one-line question and it can move your true cost by tens of thousands of dollars.

If the contract predates 20 March 2025 and you are a first-time buyer, price the lost rebate into your offer, or look at the builder’s own remaining stock instead. Assignments have real advantages, including sold-out buildings and shorter waits to completion, but on this specific point a new contract from the developer can be worth materially more to you.

What to confirm, and with whom

I am a licensed real estate advisor, not an accountant, and this is general information about how the rule works rather than advice about your situation. The rebate has personal eligibility tests, including the definition of a first-time buyer and the primary residence requirement, and the treatment of any particular assignment turns on the wording of the contract in front of you.

Confirm your own position with a qualified accountant, and check the current parameters directly with the Canada Revenue Agency. The 20 March 2025 date and the effective date of the legislation are confirmed by the Canadian Home Builders’ Association.

If you are weighing an assignment either way and want the contract date checked before you commit, send it to me. It takes a minute to look at and it is the cheapest question you will ask in the whole transaction.

Verified August 2026. Tax rules change, sometimes mid-year. Nothing here is tax advice.

A $48 Million North Vancouver Deal Just Told Presale Buyers Something About 2029 Supply

There is a kind of real estate transaction that never makes the evening news but tells you more about where the market is heading than any forecast. One of those closed on the North Shore last week.

On August 7, Vancouver Market reported that Twin Lakes Estates, a 57-unit rental townhouse community at 3701 to 3817 Princess Avenue in North Vancouver, traded for $48,000,000. That works out to $842,105 per unit at a 4.7 per cent cap rate. The buyer was identified as Manulife Financial. The seller was a joint venture between KingSett Capital and Starlight Investments, which had paid $52,500,000 for the same property in April 2022 and then spent more than $1.5 million renovating it.

Read that again. A large institutional owner spent four years and over a million dollars in upgrades, and still sold for less than it paid. And another large institution was happy to buy. If you are shopping Metro Vancouver presale condos right now, this deal is worth understanding, because the people who fund new housing are quietly telling you what they think of building it.

The site is 9.44 acres holding just 57 homes

Here is the detail that jumped out at me. Twin Lakes sits on 9.44 acres of RM-5 zoned land, per the sale writeup and the JLL listing. The improvements are seven two-storey wood-frame buildings from 1971, with 117 surface parking stalls, roughly half of them carports.

Fifty-seven homes on 9.44 acres is about six units per acre. In a region where the District of North Vancouver has been directed to plan for 22,369 new housing units between 2021 and 2041, and where council approved its updated Official Community Plan in December to meet the province’s deadline, a nine-acre low-density parcel is exactly the kind of land you would expect a developer to chase.

A quick caution, because I would rather be useful than dramatic: I have not found a filed application, a redevelopment proposal, or any stated intention to redevelop this site, and I am not going to invent an FSR or a storey count for you. What I can say is what the numbers show. The land is large, it is close-in on the North Shore, the buildings are 55 years old, and the site is dramatically underbuilt relative to its acreage. The buyer chose to pay a premium for it as income property rather than as a development play. At $842,105 per unit, Twin Lakes traded far above the roughly $465,000 per unit average that Vancouver Market cites for North Vancouver apartment buildings, and the writeup attributes that premium to the low-density format, the acreage, and an unusually stable family tenant base.

Why a big investor bought old instead of building new

This is the part that matters for presale buyers.

An institution with $48 million to deploy in Metro Vancouver housing has two basic choices. It can buy a standing building with tenants already paying rent, or it can fund new construction and wait three to five years for the first dollar of income. Right now, option one produces a reliable 4.7 per cent yield on day one. Option two means construction cost risk, financing risk, absorption risk, and the very real possibility that the finished product is worth less than it cost to build.

When capital consistently picks door number one, new supply does not get built. That is not a prediction. It is arithmetic, and it is showing up across the region. Metro Vancouver has seen a steady run of development sites and partly built projects moving through court-supervised processes over the past two years, and the pattern has been the same each time: the land is worth less as a development site than someone paid for it.

What the July numbers say about the buying window

The resale market is soft, and softness there flows directly into presale pricing power.

Greater Vancouver REALTORS reported 2,061 residential sales in Metro Vancouver in July 2026, down 9.8 per cent from July 2025 and 18.6 per cent below the ten-year seasonal average. Apartments took the hardest hit, with 952 sales, down 17.8 per cent year over year. The benchmark apartment price is $688,000, down 7.5 per cent from a year ago and down one per cent from June. The composite benchmark across all property types sits at $1,088,800.

The sales-to-active-listings ratio for apartments came in at 14 per cent. GVR’s own guidance is that prices face downward pressure below 12 per cent and upward pressure above 20 per cent. Fourteen is the middle of the road, which is roughly what you would expect from a market where nobody is panicking in either direction.

Meanwhile the Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25 per cent on July 15, its sixth consecutive hold. For a buyer, that means the financing environment is stable and knowable, which is more than could be said for most of the last four years.

So we have a buyer’s market on price, a stable rate environment, and a supply pipeline that institutional money is stepping back from. Those three things do not usually happen at once.

Market signals

The sale. Twin Lakes Estates, 3701 to 3817 Princess Avenue, North Vancouver. Sold for $48,000,000, or $842,105 per unit, at a 4.7 per cent cap rate. 57 units across 75,120 SF on 9.44 acres of RM-5 land, built 1971. Vendor was a KingSett Capital and Starlight Investments joint venture that acquired it in April 2022 for $52,500,000. Purchaser identified as Manulife Financial. Listed and sold by JLL, reported by Vancouver Market on August 7, 2026. The site’s build potential is unstated in any application I could find, so treat the redevelopment angle as an observation about acreage and age, not a plan.

Builder watch. I checked the Canadian insolvency filings for the past week and found no new BC real estate developer or builder filing in that window. The most recent BC development receiverships on the public record are earlier this year. A receiver was appointed on March 30, 2026 over the entities behind Chroma at 1888 Scotia Street in Vancouver, on a facility of roughly $76.4 million. And the BC Supreme Court granted a receivership order on April 27, 2026 over entities tied to the 5083 Joyce Street rental project, where the lender was owed about $109.2 million. Worth noting for buyers: both are rental buildings, so no presale deposits were caught up in either. Neither involves any finding of wrongdoing. They matter because they show how much financing stress sits behind projects that look finished from the sidewalk. Your deposit protection is only as good as the developer’s balance sheet and the trust arrangement holding your money.

What this means for buyers

If you are considering Vancouver presales, Burnaby presales, or a North Vancouver presale over the next year, three things follow from all of this.

First, ask about the money before you ask about the finishes. Who is the developer, what have they completed, who is the lender, and is your deposit held in a lawyer’s or notary’s trust account under the Real Estate Development Marketing Act. A good salesperson will answer all four without flinching.

Second, understand that today’s soft pricing is a function of weak demand, not abundant future supply. Institutional capital is not funding the 2029 and 2030 pipeline the way it funded the 2019 pipeline. When demand returns, the inventory that would normally absorb it may simply not exist.

Third, use your leverage now. Developers launching into a market with a 14 per cent apartment sales-to-active ratio are negotiating on deposit structure, on assignment rights, and on incentives in a way they were not doing three years ago. That window is open. It has not been open often.

I wrote in June about why this stretch of 2026 looked like an unusually good window for presale buyers, and last week about how thin the Metro Vancouver pipeline is getting. The July data and this North Shore sale have not changed that view. If anything they have sharpened it.

The bottom line

A pension-scale investor just paid a premium for a 55-year-old townhouse complex on nine acres rather than build something new, and took the seller’s loss as their gain. That is a market telling you that building is hard right now and owning is easy. Presale buyers are on the other side of that trade: you are buying the thing that is hard to build, at a moment when few people want it.

If you want to see which Metro Vancouver presale projects are actually launching, what the deposit structures look like, and which developers have the balance sheet to finish, register for VIP presale access. I will send you the ones worth your time and skip the rest.

Toronto Just Got $2.7 Billion for Rentals. Metro Vancouver’s Presale Pipeline Is Heading the Other Way

Yesterday, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mayor Olivia Chow announced that Ottawa and the City of Toronto are putting more than $2.7 billion behind 18 rental housing projects, over 5,600 rental homes in total, with construction starting on more than 4,500 of them before the end of this year. If you follow national housing headlines, you have seen the number by now.

I wrote about British Columbia’s own federal housing deal in June, so I am not going to walk through that package again. What is worth your time is the comparison. The two deals are built on opposite premises, and a CMHC forecast published on July 28 has since made the consequence of that difference much clearer for anyone shopping Metro Vancouver presale condos.

The short version: Toronto’s money buys buildings. British Columbia’s money buys cheaper inputs. And CMHC now expects our condo pipeline to keep thinning through 2028, while demand recovers.

What Toronto’s $2.7 billion actually buys

The Toronto package runs through two channels. On the non-market side, Build Canada Homes is contributing more than $310 million toward nine projects on City-owned land, producing close to 1,900 rental homes, with the City matching through nominal-value land, more than $530 million in capital and incentives, and property tax exemptions running as long as 99 years. On the market side, CMHC’s Apartment Construction Loan Program is providing more than $1.8 billion in low-cost financing for nine more projects, expected to deliver over 3,700 rental homes. Ottawa reserved up to $600 million more for other Toronto projects as they become construction-ready.

That is a supply push aimed at specific buildings, on a defined timeline, in one city. Shovels this year.

BC’s deal was designed to lower costs, not to break ground

Our June package was structured differently: more than $5 billion over ten years for local infrastructure, development-charge relief of up to 50 per cent (roughly $40,000 per unit), a one-time $284 million transfer, $2.5 billion for transit including the Surrey–Langley SkyTrain extension, and a partnership to convert more than 2,200 vacant condo units into affordable housing. All of it is real and useful. None of it puts a condo on the market next year.

There is also a tax gap worth knowing about, and I would rather you hear it from me than discover it at completion. Ottawa has eliminated GST on new homes up to $1 million for first-time buyers, worth up to $50,000. That applies here in BC. But Ontario is also removing the full 13 per cent HST on new homes, worth up to $130,000, and a separate Canada–Ontario agreement directed $1.5 billion to Toronto to cut residential development charges by 40 to 60 per cent. So a first-time buyer in Toronto and a first-time buyer in Vancouver are not getting the same deal on a new home right now. When you see a national headline about new-home tax relief, do not assume all of it lands in your budget.

The July CMHC forecast is the number that should get your attention

CMHC’s Summer Housing Market Update, published July 28, says 2026 has been weaker than the agency expected, that prices should keep adjusting downward through the year, and, this is the part that matters, that historically low levels of construction will be most visible in Ontario and British Columbia, particularly in the condominium market.

The Greater Vancouver numbers are specific. Housing starts totalled 28,112 in 2024 and 27,185 in 2025, with 2026 projected between 26,000 and 27,000. Then they fall: between 21,900 and 25,100 in 2027, and between 20,500 and 22,000 in 2028. Resale volume is projected to bottom out this year between 28,000 and 28,800 sales, then recover to between 29,800 and 32,200 in 2027. Greater Toronto is forecast to trend the opposite way on both measures.

Sit with the timing. Demand recovers from 2027. Starts keep falling through 2028. A project that breaks ground in 2028 does not complete until roughly 2031 or 2032. That is a genuinely thin window on the far side of a market that feels soft today.

You can already watch it happen, project by project

This is not an abstraction. OpenForm Properties had approval for a 40-storey tower at 7211 Greenford Avenue in Burnaby; it has since redesigned the project, reduced the height, and shifted it to rental. That is one more building that will not be a presale. In July, Ottawa committed $174.6 million through the Apartment Construction Loan Program to The Editions at 3588 Wesbrook Mall, 349 rental homes with UBC Properties Trust, completing mid-2028. Also rental.

Meanwhile Vancouver council green-lit Holborn’s downtown supertall, which would bring roughly 1,900 homes and 920 hotel suites. Approvals are still happening. But notice the pattern in what is actually getting financed and started: rental, rental, rental. CMHC named the condominium market as the place the thinning shows up, and the project-level news keeps confirming it.

Market Signals

Developer financial strength is not a theoretical concern. Two Toronto projects were recently placed under court protection: The Manderley at 1478–1496 Kingston Road, a completed 194-unit building by Nova Ridge Development Partners with 70 units still unsold, went into receivership, and the Vic Towns townhouse project with 65 unsold units was placed under creditor protection. Neither is a BC project, and I did not find a comparable BC filing this week. But the mechanism travels: a builder carrying unsold finished inventory through a slow market is carrying real financing risk, and that risk is highest for the developers who priced most aggressively on the way up.

In British Columbia, presale deposits are required to be held in trust under the Real Estate Development Marketing Act. That is meaningful protection, and it is one of the reasons I am comfortable putting clients into presales at all. It is also only as good as the paperwork, so read the disclosure statement, and confirm in writing who is holding your money and where.

What this means if you are buying a presale

If you are waiting for a better entry point, be clear with yourself about what you are waiting for. Prices may soften further this year; CMHC expects exactly that. But the supply that would keep them soft into the 2030s is being forecast down, not up, and the federal money flowing into BC is aimed at making future building cheaper rather than delivering condos sooner. Those two facts do not resolve in the patient buyer’s favour forever.

Practically, three things. First, with the Bank of Canada holding at 2.25 per cent in July, financing conditions are stable enough to plan around. You are not trying to time a moving target. Second, your leverage right now is in completed and near-completion inventory, because that is where a developer has carrying costs and you have a unit you can actually walk through; negotiate hard there. Third, on genuine presales, weight developer track record and balance sheet far more heavily than you would have in 2021, ask directly about construction financing status, and confirm deposit protection before you sign.

And keep an eye on the Surrey–Langley SkyTrain corridor. Federal transit money is committed, and stations reshape a neighbourhood’s pipeline years before the first train runs.

Let’s talk before the window narrows

The gap between what the headlines say and what the forecasts say is where good buying decisions get made. If you want a straight read on a specific building, neighbourhood, or developer, or first access to Metro Vancouver presale condos before they reach the public market, register for VIP presale access. I will tell you honestly when a project is worth your deposit and when it is not.

Sources: STOREYS (Aug 5 and July 28, 2026), Prime Minister of Canada news release (June 18, 2026), CMHC news release (July 21, 2026) and CMHC Summer Housing Market Update. Photo: Kyle Ryan via Unsplash.

Market Report: Ottawa and B.C.’s $5-Billion Housing Deal and What It Means for Metro Vancouver Presale Buyers

Today in Vancouver, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier David Eby announced a landmark federal-provincial partnership that puts more than $5 billion into British Columbia’s local infrastructure over the next ten years. It is a big, complicated announcement with a lot of moving parts, from health facilities to transit to schools in Tumbler Ridge, but tucked inside it are several measures that speak directly to anyone weighing a presale condo purchase in Metro Vancouver. This report pulls out the parts that matter for buyers and translates them into plain language.

The short version: the two governments are trying to make it cheaper and faster to build homes, convert vacant condos into affordable housing, and fund the transit that makes new neighbourhoods liveable. None of it changes your decision tomorrow morning, but all of it shapes the market you are buying into over the next few years.

Lower development charges could ease pressure on presale prices

The headline measure for homebuyers is a plan to cut development charges. Through the new Build Communities Strong Fund, Ottawa is committing nearly $1.6 billion over ten years, matched by British Columbia for a total of up to $3.2 billion, to lower development charges on multi-unit housing by up to 50% in priority communities. The government estimates this could save up to $40,000 per unit, and the same money is meant to expand the water, wastewater, and road infrastructure that new housing depends on.

Why does this matter to a presale buyer? Because development charges are a real cost that developers bake into the price of every new condo. When a municipality charges tens of thousands of dollars in fees per door, that number shows up in your purchase price. Cutting those charges does not guarantee lower presale prices, since developers respond to the whole market and not just one input, but it removes a meaningful cost pressure and, in priority communities, it could make the difference between a project that pencils out and one that gets shelved. For buyers, more viable projects means more choice and more competition among developers for your deposit.

A condo-conversion partnership aimed squarely at vacant inventory

The most striking line for anyone following the Metro Vancouver presale story is the new Canada-British Columbia Partnership on Condo Conversion. Through Build Canada Homes and BC Housing, the two governments say they will use financing tools to convert more than 2,200 vacant condo units in priority growth areas into affordable homes.

Readers of these notes know that completed-but-unsold inventory has been one of the defining features of this market, with thousands of finished units sitting empty after the 2021-2022 building boom delivered into a softer market. This program takes direct aim at that overhang. Pulling 2,200-plus vacant units into affordable housing could gradually thin the glut of standing inventory, which over time supports pricing for the units that remain on the open market. It is not an overnight fix, and the program is subject to Treasury Board approvals, but the direction is clear: governments want those empty homes occupied, fast.

$284 million to knock down barriers to building

On top of the infrastructure money, the federal government has introduced legislation for a one-time transfer of $284 million to British Columbia specifically to reduce barriers to new construction. The release does not spell out exactly how the province will deploy it, but the intent is to grease the wheels: fewer delays, fewer roadblocks between an approved project and shovels in the ground. For presale buyers, the relevant takeaway is timing, because measures that speed up approvals tend to shorten the gap between launch and completion, which is the single biggest variable in any presale purchase.

Transit money reinforces the Surrey-Langley corridor

Transit is where infrastructure spending most reliably shows up in property values, and there is real money here. Through the Canada Public Transit Fund, Ottawa is committing $2.5 billion over ten years to build new transit, and the release specifically names the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, already under construction, as a project this supports. That is in addition to $852 million previously announced for TransLink and BC Transit.

For buyers, transit corridors are where presale demand tends to concentrate and hold value. The Surrey-Langley extension has been a focus of presale activity precisely because rapid transit reshapes commute times and, with them, where people are willing to live. A renewed federal funding commitment reduces the risk that the project stalls, and a SkyTrain line that actually opens on schedule is exactly the kind of catalyst that supports presale values along its route. If you have been watching Surrey, Fleetwood, Clayton, or Langley presales, this announcement is a reason to keep watching.

The rest of the package, in brief

Much of the $5 billion goes beyond housing: more than $600 million (matched to $1.2 billion) over three years for hospitals, emergency rooms, and urgent care; up to $50 million for coastal community projects with priority to Terrace and Prince Rupert; and $100 million each from both governments for a new secondary school and health-centre work in Tumbler Ridge. These are not presale stories, but they matter to the broader case the governments are making: that growing communities need the schools, hospitals, and services that make new housing somewhere people actually want to live.

What this means for buyers

Step back and the throughline is consistent: lower the cost of building, speed up approvals, convert empty units, and fund the transit that anchors new neighbourhoods. For a Metro Vancouver presale buyer, the practical implications are modest in the near term and meaningful over the medium term. Do not expect this announcement to move a price tag next week. Do expect it to shape which projects get built, how quickly they complete, and how much standing inventory is competing with them.

If you are shopping now, two things are worth doing. First, pay attention to which municipalities are designated priority communities for the development-charge cuts as the details roll out, because those are the places where new supply and developer incentives are most likely to cluster. Second, keep transit corridors, especially Surrey-Langley, near the top of your list, since funded, in-progress rapid transit remains one of the most durable supports for presale value.

As always, an announcement is a signal, not a guarantee. Many of these measures depend on bilateral agreements and approvals still to come. But the policy wind is blowing toward more building and a thinner inventory overhang, and that is a backdrop worth understanding before you sign a presale contract.

Want this translated for your situation?

Policy moves like this one are easy to read about and hard to act on. If you want to understand what today’s announcement means for a specific neighbourhood, project, or budget, and get early access to Metro Vancouver presales positioned to benefit, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. I read the fine print so you can make a clear-eyed decision.

Metro Vancouver Presale Market Report — May 2026

Metro Vancouver’s presale condo market remains at historic lows heading into the final stretch of May 2026, but the picture is more nuanced than the headline numbers suggest. New project launches have effectively stopped, completing inventory is rising, and buyers are operating in conditions that haven’t existed in this city for over a decade. Here is the data as it stands.

Presale Activity and Launches

The first quarter of 2026 recorded zero concrete condo launches across Metro Vancouver, compared to 152 in the same period of 2025. Broader BC presale unit sales came in at just 124 transactions in Q1 2026, against approximately 6,000 in Q1 2021 at the peak of the market. Townhome launches also softened, with 334 project launches in Q1 versus 507 a year prior.

The reason is structural: Canada’s major banks typically require developers to presell approximately 70 per cent of a building’s units before providing construction financing, and that threshold is currently out of reach for most new projects. An estimated 61 per cent of the 16,589 presale units tracked across the region sit below that threshold. Industry groups are lobbying lenders to reduce the requirement to 50 per cent, a level more aligned with federal banking regulator OSFI guidance, but no formal change has been announced.

On the other side of the equation, more than 26 notable projects are reaching completion in Metro Vancouver in 2026, including major deliveries in Burnaby and Coquitlam. This completing inventory represents the most active segment of the presale market right now.

Resale Condo Conditions

The broader resale condo market provides the pricing context for presale decisions. The benchmark condo price in Metro Vancouver sits at approximately $708,000 as of May 2026, down roughly 6.8 per cent year-over-year. Overall Metro Vancouver benchmark home prices came in at $1,098,000 in April 2026, a 6.9 per cent annual decline and a 0.6 per cent decrease from March. Apartment sales fell 10.7 per cent year-over-year in April, while detached home sales rose 14 per cent, a notable divergence within the market.

Active listings across Metro Vancouver remain elevated at approximately 37 per cent above the 10-year seasonal average, and the sales-to-active-listings ratio for apartments is around 14 per cent, below the 20 per cent threshold that generally signals balanced conditions. BC residential sales totalled 6,315 transactions in April, down 1.9 per cent from April 2025.

Financing and Interest Rate Environment

The Bank of Canada held its overnight rate at 2.25 per cent on April 29, 2026, leaving the prime rate at 4.45 per cent. No rate change is widely anticipated before the next decision date of June 10. Variable mortgage rates through brokers are available in the 3.4 to 3.65 per cent range. Five-year fixed rates have risen due to upward pressure on government bond yields; major bank rates sit around 4.29 per cent, with broker rates closer to 3.9 per cent for well-qualified buyers.

Inventory and Absorption

With launches stalled and completing inventory rising, the effective supply picture is shifting. Unsold developer inventory in completing buildings is moving slowly, in some projects, sales have slowed to one or two units per month, creating holding cost pressure that is motivating discounting and negotiation. Reports of bulk unit sales to institutional buyers at 15 to 20 per cent below asking have surfaced across Metro Vancouver.

For individual buyers, this environment translates to genuine negotiating leverage that has been absent from this market for most of the past decade. The BCREA forecasts BC residential sales to fall a further 2.1 per cent to 68,700 units for the full year 2026, with average prices expected to decline approximately 1.4 per cent to $939,800.

Outlook

The near-term trajectory points to continued softness in new launches through at least the second half of 2026. The completing inventory wave currently moving through the market will provide negotiating opportunities for buyers through mid-year before absorption gradually reduces the available stock. Rate stability at current levels supports buyer purchasing power, though upward pressure on fixed rates bears watching heading into Q3.

Stay current at vancouverdwelling.ca/market-intel/

Jacky, Vancouver Dwelling

Data sources: Business in Vancouver, BCREA, CREA, Daily Hive Urbanized, Storeys, Bank of Canada (April 29 2026 rate decision), RBC Royal Bank.

Bank of Canada Holds at 2.25% — What Vancouver Presale Buyers Need to Know Right Now

This morning, the Bank of Canada announced it would hold its overnight lending rate at 2.25%, its fourth consecutive pause since last October. For anyone watching the Vancouver presale condo market, this decision lands at a pivotal moment, and it deserves a closer look than the usual “rates unchanged” headlines suggest.

The short version: variable rates are staying put for now, but fixed rates are quietly creeping up due to global pressures, and the presale landscape in Metro Vancouver is leaner than it’s been in over a decade. That combination creates a specific set of conditions that every presale buyer, whether you’re just researching or already registered for a project, needs to understand heading into spring 2026.

Here’s what the data is telling us and what it means for your decision.

Why the Bank of Canada Held, And Why It’s More Complicated Than It Looks

The BoC’s decision to hold at 2.25% wasn’t a confident “all clear” signal. Policymakers are threading a narrow needle: domestic economic data is soft (BC home sales are projected to fall another 2.1% this year), but renewed inflation pressure from the conflict in Iran has sent global oil prices higher, creating upward pressure on the cost of living. With Canada-US trade negotiations also scheduled for this summer, the Bank signalled it’s in a genuine “wait and see” mode.

Crucially, the Bank’s next rate decision isn’t until June 10. Until then, variable mortgage rates will hold roughly where they are, hovering around 3.4% to 3.85% depending on your lender. That’s still historically reasonable, and for presale buyers with completions scheduled later this year or in 2027, it offers some breathing room.

But here’s the nuance that many buyers are missing.

Fixed Rates Are Moving in the Other Direction

While the BoC holds steady, fixed mortgage rates have been quietly rising. Bond yields, which fixed rates track closely, have climbed in response to the same geopolitical pressures the Bank is monitoring. As of today, five-year fixed rates in BC sit around 4.04%, with three-year fixed rates at approximately 4.30%.

That matters for presale buyers because most people who purchase a new development today won’t be securing their mortgage until completion, which could be one, two, or even three years away. You’re not locking in a rate today. You’re making a purchase decision today and hoping the rate environment is favourable when you close.

If fixed rates continue drifting upward before your completion date, your financing costs will be higher than what today’s rate sheets suggest. This is why stress-testing your presale purchase against a range of rate scenarios, not just today’s, is so important.

The Vancouver Presale Market: Historic Quiet Creates Real Opportunity

Beyond rates, the bigger story for presale buyers right now is how dramatically the supply of new presale launches has contracted. In February 2026, just 64 new presale homes came to market across the entire Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley region. For context, a typical February sees over 1,100 units launch. That’s roughly 6% of historical norms.

The reason is straightforward: developers are cautious. With Metro Vancouver benchmark prices down 6.8% year-over-year (now sitting at $1,104,300), and March 2026 resale volumes running 31.8% below the 10-year average, builders aren’t rushing to launch into soft demand. Many projects have been delayed with no firm timelines, and the developers who are bringing projects to market are increasingly targeting end-users, people who want to live in what they buy, rather than investor purchasers.

The sales-to-active listings ratio across Metro Vancouver is sitting at 14.2%, which firmly places us in buyer’s market territory. Anything below 12% signals a buyer’s market, and we’re not far above that threshold.

What a Thin Presale Market Means for Buyers Who Are Ready

Here’s where the narrative flips in your favour. When the presale market is this quiet, the projects that do launch tend to come with more motivated developers and, increasingly, buyer-friendly terms. We’re seeing more developers offer extended deposit structures, free assignment clauses, capped levies, and enhanced incentive packages, concessions that would have been unthinkable during the 2021–2022 frenzy.

The pool of competing buyers is also smaller. If you were trying to purchase a presale two or three years ago, you were often competing against dozens of registered buyers for a limited allocation. Today, the dynamics have reversed. Developers need qualified, committed buyers, and that gives you negotiating leverage you simply didn’t have before.

For buyers who have pre-approval in hand, a down payment ready, and a clear picture of their completion timeline, this is genuinely one of the better environments in recent memory to purchase a presale, not because prices are at a bottom (no one can promise that), but because the conditions are in your favour as a buyer rather than a seller.

What This Means for Buyers at Different Stages

If you’re still researching: Use this slower period to get thorough. Build out your shortlist of neighbourhoods: areas like North Vancouver, Coquitlam’s Burke Mountain, and Surrey’s Fleetwood corridor continue to see completions this year from major builders including Anthem, Beedie, Polygon, and Concert. Understand your financing capacity at a range of rate scenarios, not just today’s.

If you’re registered for a project launching soon: Pay close attention to the completion timeline and what that means for your rate environment at closing. If fixed rates continue to rise, locking in a rate-hold through a lender early, even before you finalize purchase, can provide valuable insurance.

If you’ve already purchased presale and are awaiting completion: The combination of softening benchmark prices and rising fixed rates is worth discussing with your mortgage broker now. Get clarity on your rate-hold options and what the gap between your contract price and current comparable sales looks like in your specific building and neighbourhood.

The Bigger Picture: Patience Is Being Rewarded

The Vancouver presale market has been through a significant correction. That correction has been uncomfortable for many who bought at the peak, but for buyers entering today, it represents a reset toward more sustainable conditions. Prices are softer, competition is lower, and developers are more flexible than they’ve been in years.

The Bank of Canada’s hold this morning doesn’t change any of that fundamentally. What it does confirm is that we’re not in a rate-cutting environment right now, and that the people who benefit most from the current market are buyers who are well-prepared, not those waiting for a single catalytic moment to trigger action.

Ready to Explore What’s Available?

If you’re considering a Vancouver presale purchase and want VIP access to new project launches before they open to the public, register with Vancouver Dwelling. We work directly with developers across Metro Vancouver to provide early access, floor plan previews, and pricing before public launch, at no cost to buyers.

Have questions about a specific neighbourhood or project? Reach out directly: we’d love to help you navigate the market.

Sources: Bank of Canada (April 29, 2026), BCREA Housing Market Update & Q2 2026 Forecast, Rain City Properties April 2026 Market Snapshot, Daily Hive / Storeys presale launch data, WOWA.ca Vancouver Housing Market, RBC Royal Bank rate update.

Explore Further: With rates on hold, the window to lock in presale pricing is open. Explore presale projects across Metro Vancouver and get in touch for VIP access before public launch.

Vancouver Presale Market Update – April 2026

The Greater Vancouver presale market continues to attract strong interest from both first-time buyers and seasoned investors. Here’s what you need to know this month.

Key Trends This Month

Developers are launching new projects in high-demand areas including Coquitlam, Burnaby, and Surrey. Presale pricing has remained relatively stable, making now a good window for buyers who want to lock in today’s prices before the next uptick.

What This Means for Buyers

If you’re considering a presale purchase, the key advantages right now include flexible deposit structures and the ability to choose your floor plan and finishes. With construction timelines typically running 2–4 years, buyers who act now can benefit from appreciation before they even receive their keys.

Get VIP Access

Want to be the first to hear about new project launches and VIP pricing? Sign up for VIP access and I’ll reach out personally when something matches your criteria.

Jacky Ng PREC* | Vancouver Dwelling | WhatsApp Jacky

Explore Further: Looking for a strong-value play in the current market? Browse our Burnaby presale condos: one of Metro Vancouver’s most active presale markets right now.

BC’s Housing Market Outlook for 2026: What Buyers and Sellers Need to Know

The Market Outlook for 2026 Is Clearer Now

As we settle into 2026, the housing market in British Columbia is showing signs of stability. But that doesn’t mean it’s booming. Instead, experts are calling it a year of subdued activity. Both buyers and sellers are being cautious, waiting to see how interest rates, inventory, and broader economic trends play out.

While we’re not in a full downturn, we’re also not seeing the rapid price growth or buying frenzy of previous years. That makes this a good time to pause and reassess your strategy, whether you’re looking to buy, sell, or hold.

Why Activity Is Slower Than Usual

There are a few key reasons why the housing market remains quieter in 2026:

• Mortgage rates are still high
• Household debt levels are limiting buying power
• Many potential sellers are holding off listing their homes
• Buyers are being more selective and price-sensitive

This combination has created a kind of standstill in some areas, especially for mid-range and luxury properties. First-time buyers remain interested but are facing affordability challenges.

What This Means for Buyers

If you’re a buyer in 2026, the good news is that prices have softened in many parts of BC. The urgency of past years has faded, and there’s more room for negotiation. Homes are staying on the market longer, and some sellers are adjusting prices to attract attention.

However, you still need to budget carefully. High interest rates mean your monthly costs could be significantly higher than a few years ago. Run the numbers based on today’s mortgage terms and avoid overextending yourself.

Also, expect to see more properties with longer possession timelines and fewer bidding wars, especially outside of Vancouver’s core.

What This Means for Sellers

For sellers, 2026 is not the year to test the market with aggressive pricing. Buyers are watching the numbers closely and doing their homework. If your home is overpriced, it will likely sit for weeks or even months.

To sell successfully in this market, it helps to:

• Price competitively from the start
• Highlight energy efficiency and recent upgrades
• Offer flexibility on terms to appeal to cautious buyers

Homes that are well-presented and properly priced are still selling, but sellers must be realistic and patient.

The Bigger Picture: Prices Are Flattening

Across many regions in BC, prices have either dipped slightly or leveled out. This is not a crash. It’s a return to balance. After years of price growth, some downward correction was expected.

Expect to see modest changes throughout the year, depending on the community and type of property. Condos may hold their value better in urban areas, while single-family homes in the suburbs could experience more variability.

How Long Will This Market Last

The current trend of subdued activity is expected to continue through most of 2026. Some experts are forecasting a slow rebound starting later in the year, especially if interest rates start to come down.

Inventory levels are still lower than average, which could help support prices and prevent a full decline. If borrowing becomes cheaper, we could see a small wave of pent-up demand begin to release in the second half of the year.

Smart Moves in a Subdued Market

Whether you’re buying or selling in 2026, these strategies can help:

• Get pre-approved for a mortgage and understand your true budget
• Work with an agent who knows local pricing trends
• Stay updated on rate changes and market reports
• Don’t rush, but be ready when the right opportunity comes

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the 2026 housing market slower than usual

High interest rates, economic uncertainty, and cautious consumer behavior have all combined to reduce activity across much of the province.

Are home prices dropping in 2026

In many areas, prices have dipped slightly or remained flat. We are not seeing a crash, but rather a cooling compared to recent years.

Is it a good time to buy property in BC

It depends on your financial situation. If you can handle higher borrowing costs and plan to hold long-term, it could be a good time to buy with less competition.

Will mortgage rates go down this year

Many analysts believe we may see modest rate reductions later in 2026, but timing is uncertain and depends on inflation and economic indicators.

Should I sell my home now or wait

If you need to sell, do it with the right pricing strategy. If you’re flexible, waiting until later in the year might bring more buyers back into the market.

What’s the best strategy for 2026 real estate

Be patient, stay informed, and work with experienced professionals. This is a market that rewards preparation over emotion.

Conclusion

The 2026 real estate market in British Columbia is best described as calm and cautious. Buyers are looking for value. Sellers are adjusting to new expectations. And everyone is watching what interest rates do next.

If you stay informed and take a thoughtful approach, this slower market could offer real advantages, whether you’re making your next move or waiting for the right time.

Explore Further: If stability and long-term value are your priorities in 2026, take a look at our Coquitlam presale condos, a growing market with some of the best remaining presale opportunities in Metro Vancouver.

2026 BC Property Assessments Show Market Cooling – What You Need to Know

Why 2026 Property Assessments Matter Right Now

If you’re a homeowner in British Columbia, you may have noticed something unexpected in your 2026 property assessment notice, your home’s assessed value may have dropped. This isn’t just a number on paper. It signals a clear shift in the housing market across the province.

These assessments are based on market conditions as of July 1 of the previous year. Many communities, especially in the Lower Mainland, are seeing typical assessed values down by as much as 10 percent. This reflects a broader softening in home prices and sales activity.

Where Are Property Values Falling

The most noticeable declines are in major urban centres like Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey, and White Rock. Some homes in these areas have seen assessed values dip between 5 and 9 percent compared to the year before.

Meanwhile, certain smaller or rapidly developing communities are holding steady or even showing slight gains. It’s becoming more of a mixed picture, where location matters more than ever.

Will Lower Assessments Lead to Lower Taxes

One of the biggest myths is that lower assessed values automatically mean lower property taxes. The truth is, your taxes could still rise depending on how your home’s value changed relative to others in your area.

If your home’s value dropped more than average, you might see some relief. But if it dropped less than surrounding properties, your tax bill might increase. Municipalities adjust tax rates each year based on their revenue needs, not just changes in market value.

What It Means for Homeowners

A drop in assessed value can feel like a loss in equity, but it doesn’t necessarily mean your home is worth less on the market today. Property assessments are a lagging indicator. They don’t always align with current sale prices, especially in a shifting market.

If you’re planning to sell soon, it’s important not to base your listing price on your property assessment alone. Instead, look at recent comparable sales and talk to a real estate professional who knows your neighbourhood.

What It Means for Buyers

For buyers, this cooling in assessed values might feel like a signal to jump in, but approach with care. While values are lower on paper, actual market prices may have already shifted since the assessment date. What looks like a bargain might not be as simple as it seems.

That said, this environment could offer opportunities to negotiate better deals, especially in areas with high inventory and longer time on market.

Should You Appeal Your Assessment

If you believe your assessed value doesn’t fairly reflect your property’s condition or market value, you can request a review. The window to appeal is short, so act quickly if you plan to file.

Common reasons to appeal include major differences between your property and others nearby, errors in lot size or features, or recent sales that suggest a much lower market value.

Key Takeaways

• Many homeowners across BC are seeing lower assessed values in 2026
• This reflects a slower market and softer pricing trends
• Property taxes may still increase or decrease depending on your property’s relative change
• Assessed value is not the same as current market value
• Buyers and sellers should use up-to-date sales data, not just assessments, to guide decisions

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did my property’s assessment go down this year

It’s likely due to a general cooling in the real estate market between mid-2024 and mid-2025, which is the time frame assessments are based on.

Does this mean I can pay less property tax

Not necessarily. It depends on how your property’s value changed compared to others in your area.

Can I sell my home for the assessed value

In most cases, no. Assessed value and market value are different. Your real selling price will depend on market demand, location, and current trends.

Should I use my assessment to set a listing price

It’s better to rely on recent comparable sales. Your property assessment may be outdated by the time you list.

Can I appeal my assessment if I think it’s too high

Yes. If you believe your assessment is inaccurate, you can file an appeal before the deadline.

Do lower assessments mean it’s a good time to buy

Possibly. It may reflect more negotiating room, but always look at current data and consider financing conditions.

Explore Further: Curious how presale pricing compares to current assessments in your target area? Start with our Richmond presale condos: Richmond remains one of the most in-demand markets in Metro Vancouver.

Shocking Vancouver Real Estate Market Stats – December 2025 Report Reveals 20-Year Sales Low

Metro Vancouver Sales Hit Historic Lows

In a year that defied market expectations, the Greater Vancouver REALTORS® (GVR) reported that 2025 marked the lowest annual home sales total in over two decades. Just 23,800 properties were sold across the region, representing a 10.4% drop from 2024 and nearly 25% below the 10-year average of 31,625.

“This year was one for the history books,” said Andrew Lis, Chief Economist at GVR. Despite low sales, Metro Vancouver saw record listing activity, providing an interesting dynamic for 2026 buyers and sellers.

Sales-to-Listings Ratio Signals Buyer’s Market

One of the most telling metrics this December was the sales-to-active listings ratio, which landed at:

• Detached Homes: 9.3%
• Townhomes: 14.6%
• Condos: 15.1%

When this ratio dips below 12% for a sustained period, it typically signals downward pressure on prices. That’s exactly what unfolded across most housing categories.

Inventory Surges to Record High

While buyers hesitated, sellers flooded the market, leading to 65,335 total listings in 2025, an 8.2% increase over 2024 and the highest total since the 1990s.

This number was:

• 28.4% higher than in 2023
• 13.1% above the 10-year annual average (57,782)

It’s clear the market has shifted in favor of buyers, offering greater selection and negotiating power.

Benchmark Price Trends in December 2025

The increase in supply and lower sales translated to declining home prices across all major property types.

📉 Detached Homes

• Benchmark Price: $1,879,800
• 1-Year Change: ▼5.3%
• 1-Month Change: ▼1.1%

🏘️ Townhomes

• Benchmark Price: $1,056,600
• 1-Year Change: ▼5.0%
• Notable Drop: Coquitlam ▼6.8%

🏢 Apartments

• Benchmark Price: $710,000
• 1-Year Change: ▼5.3%
• Notable Drop: Maple Ridge ▼8.0%

🔻 Top Areas with Price Declines

What This Means for Buyers in 2026

With lower borrowing costs, more listings, and softening prices, homebuyers in 2026 are entering one of the most favorable markets in recent years.

🔑 Key Takeaways for Buyers:

• Less competition = better deals
• More inventory = more options
• Lower mortgage rates = greater affordability
• Sellers more flexible on price and terms

Whether you’re a first-time buyer or upsizing, the coming months offer a rare window of opportunity.

Pre-Sale Market Outlook: A Strategic Opportunity

While the resale market slowed, pre-sale developments are poised for a rebound.

💡 Why Pre-Sales May Shine in 2026:

• Fixed pricing: Lock in today’s lower market rates
• Deposit structure: Spread payments over time
• Future value: Buy now, move in later, post market recovery
• Builder incentives: Developers are offering perks like upgrades or deposit matching

Pre-sales in Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, and Vancouver East will likely see heightened interest as buyers try to hedge against future price rebounds.

📊 December 2025: Market Snapshot

✅ Sales Summary

✅ New Listings in December

• Total New Listings: 1,849 (↑10.3% YoY)
• This was above the 10-year seasonal average

✅ Overall Benchmark Price:

 $1,114,800

• ▼4.5% from December 2024
• ▼0.8% from November 2025

❓Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Why were 2025 sales so low in Metro Vancouver?

Sales were impacted by high borrowing costs early in the year, global trade tensions, and changing buyer sentiment. It was a correction year after the post-pandemic boom.

2. Will prices continue to fall in 2026?

That depends on interest rates and buyer demand. Prices may stabilize as rates ease, but areas with excess supply could see further softening.

3. Is now a good time to buy a home in Vancouver?

Yes, with high inventory, lower prices, and falling interest rates, it’s a strong market for buyers.

4. How are pre-sales affected by the market slowdown?

Pre-sale projects remain active. Many developers are offering incentives, and pricing may be more competitive than in 2021–2022.

5. Which areas offer the best deals?

Look at Burnaby North, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, and Richmond, these areas saw notable price drops and strong listing activity.

6. How can I take advantage of this market as an investor?

This is an ideal time to explore pre-sale condos and townhomes that will complete in 1–3 years. You can secure pricing now, while the market is soft, and reap gains as it recovers.

Conclusion: A Market in Reset, Not Retreat

The Vancouver real estate market in December 2025 marked a historic slowdown in sales, but also laid the groundwork for a more balanced, buyer-friendly environment in 2026.

This isn’t a crash: it’s a reset, and savvy buyers, especially those eyeing pre-sales, may find that 2026 becomes their launchpad for real estate success.

Explore Further: In a slower market, savvy buyers look for deals others miss. Browse our Metro Vancouver condo assignments: properties already bought at presale that are now available, sometimes below the original purchase price.