{"id":397042,"date":"2026-01-08T22:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T22:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/397042\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T22:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T22:42:08","slug":"whats-going-on-with-vancouvers-zany-real-estate-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/397042\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s going on with Vancouver\u2019s zany real estate market?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite falling prices in Vancouver, many potential first-time home buyers are still staying out of the market.DARRYL DYCK\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

For the last decade, the biggest story in Vancouver has been real estate.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s high cost of housing has been a global talking point, with values on par with properties in London, New York and Hong Kong. It became an accepted fact that those prices were being fuelled, in large part, by foreign investors. This eventually prompted crackdowns on this class of purchaser by governments in Victoria and Ottawa.<\/p>\n

Despite that, there still existed a housing crisis. Too few homes, for too many people, continued to drive up costs. Build more housing and prices would come down. It was that simple, we were told.<\/p>\n

And, to some extent, this theory has held. More homes are available. Prices are coming down. But a funny thing has happened: many first-time home purchasers are still not buying what developers and others are selling.<\/p>\n

Opinion: Who\u2019s going to move to Vancouver now?<\/a><\/p>\n

New data from the Greater Vancouver Realtors indicates that in 2025, the region recorded its lowest annual homes sales total in more than two decades. The association said sales were down 10.4 per cent from 2024 and nearly 25 per cent below the 10-year annual average.<\/p>\n

This is a fascinating development, for several reasons.<\/p>\n

First, we have been told repeatedly over the last few years that there wasn\u2019t enough housing for all the people who currently live in the region. This is why legislation was passed by the B.C. government eliminating zoning for single family neighbourhoods in almost all parts of the province. Today, fourplexes and, in some cases, sixplexes are being built on lots once occupied by a single-family home. Meantime, condominium towers continue to go up in all directions, despite reports that some developers have halted plans for new builds because of low demand. So, there has never been more housing available than there is now.<\/p>\n

Yet, there were more than 2,500 new condos sitting empty and unsold in Metro Vancouver as of October, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. It\u2019s likely that number is only going to grow as more towers are completed over the course of this year and more units come online.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Condo buildings continue to be built all over Vancouver even as some developers have stopped construction because of low demand.ETHAN CAIRNS\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: while prices are coming down, they are not low enough to lure today\u2019s more discerning buyer. The benchmark price for a detached home <\/a>in Greater Vancouver in December was $1,879,800, which is a 5.3-per-cent decrease from the year before. Condo prices were also down by the same amount year-over-year with a benchmark price of $710,000. The price for a townhouse was $1,056,000.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s still a heck of a lot of money. And in today\u2019s turbulent times, with so much economic uncertainty, many people are hitting the pause button on making big financial investments \u2013 especially young people who don\u2019t know what the near-term future holds. But there is another interesting factor at play: these same would-be buyers don\u2019t seem keen about forking over more than $700,000 to purchase a 450-square-foot condo. They\u2019re saying, \u201cSorry, I\u2019ll take a pass.\u201d That\u2019s a change from the past, when it was seen as important just to get into the market.<\/p>\n

Greg Zayadi, the president of Rennie, a Vancouver-based real-estate marketing firm, told the CBC recently that the slowdown we are in the midst of has been building for three years, but accelerated in the last year. \u201cThe last time we saw this level of developer-owned unsold inventory was 24 years ago,\u201d he said. He said the problem is people not wanting to live in a small box. They want something bigger \u2013 up to 1,500 square feet \u2013 if they\u2019re going to pay north of $800,000 for a place to live.<\/p>\n

And that seems more than reasonable.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also hard to see how that will happen, at least not for a while. Developers, in many cases, paid exorbitant amounts of money years ago for the land they are building on. They only recoup that investment, and ideally realize a profit, by charging a lot per square foot. Somehow, someone is going to have to pay the freight. Maybe provincial and municipal governments are going to have to reduce red tape to help developers cut their pre-build costs.<\/p>\n

Vancouver rental builders, facing slowing demand, say government support needed<\/a><\/p>\n

Anne McMullin, the president and CEO of the Urban Development Institute, says development costs have escalated so much in the last 10 years that building a unit is out of the price range of 80 per cent of the public in Metro Vancouver. <\/p>\n

Things may begin to return to \u201cnormal\u201d in 2026, but we don\u2019t know. Housing prices are still decoupled from the income realities of many. The longer new home buyers can hold out for even more sanity in the marketplace to be restored, the better \u2013 for them and society at large.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Despite falling prices in Vancouver, many potential first-time home buyers are still staying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,2922],"class_list":{"0":"post-397042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-noastack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}