{"id":540945,"date":"2026-03-16T21:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T21:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540945\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T21:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T21:47:09","slug":"why-some-vancouver-homeowners-cash-out-and-others-wait-in-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540945\/","title":{"rendered":"Why some Vancouver homeowners cash out\u2014and others wait in limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel C. and her husband hadn\u2019t planned on anything more exciting for their East Vancouver<\/a> house in the 25 years they\u2019d owned it except selling at the going rate once the kids moved out and buying something smaller.<\/p>\n

Then real-estate brokers<\/a> started calling in May 2022 to talk about acquiring her 1899 house as part of a deal aimed at assembling five lots that could be re-developed into a mixed-use development of up to 18 storeys under the Broadway Plan<\/a> being talked about.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t give us exact numbers, but the phrase was \u2018Back up a truck with money to your front yard,\u2019\u201d Rachel recalls wistfully. A million dollars over the assessed value was the number floated at one point. They fantasized about buying a house in the suburbs with a pool. A commune for the whole family in North Vancouver. Or an apartment in Victoria and a pied-a-terre in Vancouver. <\/p>\n

But then the brokers stopped calling, even though the Broadway Plan got approved at council that fall. Other deals near her seemed to be happening. One of Rachel\u2019s neighbours on the next block sold her modest bungalow for almost double the assessed value in a five-lot land assembly. But the phone was silent at Rachel\u2019s house. <\/p>\n

Now she and her retired husband are in limbo. They don\u2019t want to sell if there\u2019s a possibility of some future buyout at a higher price than normal market. (Their house, which they bought for $275,000 in 1998, is currently assessed at just over $2 million.) And they\u2019re reluctant to repair anything in the house except for the basics\u2014including a broken kitchen drawer\u2014if it\u2019s all going to be torn down anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just sitting here now. We don\u2019t know what to do. The place is falling apart but I can\u2019t bear to fix anything. I feel like we\u2019re playing chicken now\u2014who\u2019s going to sell first?\u201d<\/p>\n

That scenario is playing out across many of the 500 blocks in Vancouver\u2019s Broadway Plan, where the city\u2019s biggest-ever mass upzoning in established central-city neighbourhoods has created a lottery of winners and losers among Vancouver residents. <\/p>\n

Renters are caught up in it, too, with some lucking into a potential lifetime of subsidized rent, while others\u2014not legally on the lease in their communal house or shared apartment, not eligible in some other way\u2014have nothing to look forward to but eventual uncompensated eviction.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s homeowners who are facing the most extreme financial swings. A few sold for casino-level winnings. Others have had their properties optioned and then un- optioned as development has slowed to a crawl in Vancouver, shackled by high land and construction costs, slow permitting times and declining rents. <\/p>\n

And still others, with no offers, are living in a kind of fog, with a lot of uncertainty about whether their home will eventually be part of the lottery win if and when the real-estate market starts to function again, or whether it will actually decline in value as towers go up somewhere near them. <\/p>\n

The sense of housing as something more than just a place to live has been a phenomenon for years in this rapidly morphing city, where real-estate gambling has become part of inherent local psychology. But it\u2019s been more restricted in the past to limited sites or limited bursts. The Cambie corridor owners produced some windfalls 15 years ago, when that was rezoned for higher density because of the Canada Line coming in. And more than one homeowner in the past 30 years has cashed in bigtime by selling to an offshore owner or new immigrant.<\/p>\n

The Broadway Plan super-sized that dynamic. The city\u2019s new Villages plan will produce more of that phenomenon, but likely in a more orderly way as the city reverts to a system of clustering density tightly in certain key spots\u2014around transit or commercial nodes\u2014rather than randomly everywhere in a huge area.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a Catch 22,\u201d says veteran realtor Marty Pospischil. \u201cThere are some winners and some losers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pospischil says those who didn\u2019t get to be part of a land assembly but now have the prospect of a 19-storey neighbour next to their Arts and Crafts bungalow will see an immediate effect if the tower proposed is right next door.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s impacted immediately by half a million to a million because you immediately lose that sense of privacy in your back yard.\u201d<\/p>\n

He notes the highest-priced single-family homes are now those outside the city zones that have been slated for increased density (even though a multiplex could theoretically go up at any moment in those \u201csafe havens\u201d as well). <\/p>\n

If it\u2019s a block away, generally, the impact is less, except in one area, he said: Kits Point. Although it\u2019s a few blocks outside the northern Broadway Plan boundary, it does have 11 towers at the Sen\u0313\u00e1\u1e35w development theoretically going up nearby. Pospischil said he has seen properties go from selling at $3.5 million to not being able to get anything more than the high twos.<\/p>\n

Corey Martin, at the R&D Group real- estate operation, says much the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a major development is going up next door, they\u2019re definitely going to be impacted negatively,\u201d is his assessment. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a pretty risky investment plan to think that, in future, someone else will come and offer a bag of money. So, the neighbourhood will still be desirable but it won\u2019t be at a premium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other realtors\u2014and academics\u2014are not so sure there\u2019s such a direct impact. <\/p>\n

Realtor Murphy Costello, whose own home on West 14th Avenue in Kitsilano is across the alley from a proposed tower, says he\u2019s not sure how his value has been affected. Duplexes like his were selling for $3 million a few years ago. Now he thinks he couldn\u2019t likely get more than $2.6 million. But he can\u2019t tell if that\u2019s definitely because of the tower proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to tell if that\u2019s the general market,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Tsur Somerville, a UBC professor specializing in land economics, also sees no definitive answer. \u201cIt\u2019s been hard to figure out the effects,\u201d says Somerville, who found in a previous study that a laneway house on Vancouver\u2019s west side did produce a mild reduction in selling price for the homes that bordered that lot. <\/p>\n

On the whole, he doesn\u2019t think any Vancouver homeowner is ever going to lose, given that there will always be some people ready to pay handsomely to live in a single-family-style house close to downtown and in a transit- and retail-rich neighbourhood, no matter what\u2019s around it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe potential decline in value by the density around you is more than offset by other factors. In the short term, there are winners and losers but, over time, they\u2019re all winners.\u201d<\/p>\n

One proof of his hypothesis is the\u00a0West End, Vancouver\u2019s famously densest neighbourhood, where even being surrounded by towers hasn\u2019t done much to seriously dent prices.<\/p>\n

Paul Musgrove, a retired journalist, has lived near the intersection of Nelson and Cardero since 1971 in one of the few remaining single-family homes in the downtown-adjacent neighbourhood. His property, smaller than the standard 4,000-square-foot city lot, is still assessed at $2 million, down slightly from previous years but still more than 10 times the original purchase price. He\u2019s not planning to move, so the only difference city rezonings and new towers in his neighbourhood make is more people using community centres, libraries and parks that aren\u2019t getting expanded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mind them shovelling people in here if they provide services,\u201d which\u00a0isn\u2019t happening, he observes. \u201cThe city loves densification, but they don\u2019t like fixing anything.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rachel C. and her husband hadn\u2019t planned on anything more exciting for their East Vancouver house in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-540945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540945","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=540945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}