Comparing BC's Top Real Estate Portals: Zealty, REW, REALTOR.ca and HouseSigma

Some of that is structural rather than a product decision. CREA is the national association for REALTORS, funded by REALTORS, and the site exists to serve its members. Publishing the complete history of every listing is not necessarily in the interest of the people paying for the platform. That is a fair position for a member organization to take. It just means REALTOR.ca is a good place to confirm what is for sale, and a weak place to work out what something is worth.

REW.ca: Neighbourhood Content and New Developments

REW has been part of the BC real estate landscape for a long time, and it has built out areas the other portals mostly ignore.

What it does well: rental listings alongside resale, condo building pages with year built, unit counts and storeys, presale and new development inventory, search by proximity to schools, and a deep library of neighbourhood guides, news and video. If you are trying to understand what it actually feels like to live in Port Moody or East Vancouver before you start touring, REW is a genuinely useful read.

Where it falls short: REW does publish BC sale prices, free, through its Property Insights tool. What it does not carry is the listing history behind the sale. REW describes the Insights data as aggregated from public sources including BC Assessment together with commercial sources, so you get a sale number without the original asking price, the price cuts, or the days on market that produced it. For the question that decides your offer price, what this home has actually done on the market, you will need to go elsewhere.

REW is also an advertising business. Its agent membership tiers are advertising packages that agents and developers pay for, sold on visibility. Whoever pays the most gets the placement, which is not the same thing as being the best agent for that building or that street. REW also has no consumer mobile app in either the App Store or Google Play as of September 2026, which matters when you are standing outside a place on a Saturday afternoon.

HouseSigma: Multi-Province Coverage and a Good App

HouseSigma built its reputation in Ontario after the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the Toronto Real Estate Board's appeal in August 2018, leaving in place a ruling that opened up sold and historical listing data, and it has since expanded into British Columbia and Alberta. It says it serves more than two million monthly users.

What it does well: sold prices, listing history, de-listed properties, assessment data, AI estimates for both value and rent, school scores, listing popularity signals, and a good mobile app. The Chinese language experience serves a large part of the Metro Vancouver market well. If you are shopping in both Toronto and Vancouver, the multi-province coverage is real value.

Where it falls short in BC: HouseSigma is a brokerage as well as a portal. When you ask for help on a listing, you are routed to a HouseSigma agent. That agent may be excellent, but the pool is limited to agents who have joined that one brokerage, in a province where HouseSigma is still the newer entrant.

The bigger gap is search itself. At the time of writing, HouseSigma is missing many of the filters and sort options a buyer needs to narrow a large market down to a real shortlist. You cannot easily sort by price cut, days at current price, price to assessment ratio, price to previous sold price or gross rental yield, or filter on things like lot frontage, suite potential or a maintenance fee ceiling. In a market with nearly 20,000 active listings, that difference is measured in weekends.

The interface can also work against you. Reviewing the current app and site in September 2026, a lot of data is pushed onto the map at once, which makes it busy and slower to read than it needs to be. There is no dark mode, no building page or aggregated building count on the map, listing photos are not shown on map pins, and price reductions are not flagged on the listing cards. Those last few matter most in a dense condo corridor like Metrotown or Brentwood, where forty units in one tower collapse into a single point on the map.

Zealty: Full Transparency, BC First

Zealty is a BC first platform, and the mission behind it is straightforward: show the buyer everything. Not a summary of the listing, the whole listing. Room by room dimensions, every field an agent sees, and even the commission being offered on the sale. Most portals quietly strip that out. Zealty publishes it.

Advanced filters and sorting. This is the part buyers notice first. Sort by price cut, days at current price, price to assessment ratio, price to previous sold price, price per square foot, maintenance fee, gross rental yield. Filter by lot frontage, building age, suite potential, strata fee ceiling, open house day. The point is not having more toggles. It is getting from nearly 20,000 listings down to the eight worth seeing, in about a minute.

Full MLS price history. Not just the current asking price and not just the final sale price. Zealty shows the complete chain: original list price, every price change with its date, expiries, relists under new MLS numbers, and the eventual sale. A home quietly relisted three times over fourteen months is a very different negotiation than one that came to market last week.

Sold and expired listings back to 2003. Both are searchable and filterable, not just visible on a single property page, and the record runs more than twenty years deep. Expired listings show you where sellers overreached and which homes are likely to come back cheaper.

Strata building pages and building health. Zealty aggregates more than 18,000 BC strata buildings into browsable building pages, and the map shows building level counts instead of stacking pins on top of each other. You can see every active and sold unit in a tower, the unit mix, and how the building has performed.

On top of that, a strata health widget sits right on the listing, powered by StrataReports.ca. It reads the building's strata documents and surfaces what usually stays buried until your subject removal deadline: depreciation report status, contingency reserve fund position, special levies, major repair history and open building issues. Two identical condos in the same neighbourhood can be very different purchases once you see the state of the building behind them. For the full walkthrough, read how to assess a condo building and what strata fees should actually look like.

Foreclosures and court-ordered sales. Filterable in one click rather than something you hunt for by reading listing remarks. The BC foreclosure guide covers how the court approval process changes your offer.

Deep assessment data. Assessed values, lot boundaries and price to assessment ratios sit directly on the listing, which is the fastest sanity check on whether an asking price is reasonable.

Polygon map search. Draw the exact area you care about, down to a few blocks, and save it with email alerts. School catchments and municipal boundaries rarely match the shape of the area you actually want to live in.

AI valuations and rent estimates. OfferValue and OfferRent are powered by Offerland.ca, which describes OfferRent as the first and most used residential market rent valuation tool in Canada and reports more than 300 market rent appraisals a day. Offerland.ca works with Canadian banks and appraisal firms. OfferValue produces the estimated property value and OfferRent produces the estimated market rent, both on the same listing page, which is the pairing investors need to work out a yield. It also means the estimate a regular buyer sees on Zealty is produced by the same valuation infrastructure that Canadian lenders and appraisal firms use.

Search inside ChatGPT. In 2026 Zealty became the first Canadian real estate portal to operate directly inside ChatGPT, so you can search live BC listings in plain language without opening a browser tab.

Small things that add up. Listing photos on the map pins, price cuts flagged directly on the listing cards, and dark mode for the many people who search listings in bed at eleven at night.

The app. The Zealty app is free on iOS and Android and has passed 10,000 downloads with more than 150 five star reviews across the App Store and Google Play in under four months.

Content, daily. Zealty publishes real estate knowledge content every day, guides on how buying, selling, strata and BC rules actually work. ZONED, the sharpest weekly real estate newsletter in British Columbia, goes out to more than 36,000 subscribers every week.

Where Zealty falls short: it is not Canada-wide. There is no Alberta or Ontario coverage. Sold prices and MLS listing history are also limited to the Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley and Chilliwack and District board areas, since Zealty is not yet a member of every board in the province.

How Each Portal Makes Money, and Why It Matters

A portal's business model shapes what it shows you. This is worth understanding before you hand over your phone number.

• REALTOR.ca is funded by CREA membership. It is a service to REALTORS across Canada, which is why it is comprehensive on active listings and conservative on everything else.
• REW.ca sells advertising and lead products to agents and developers. Featured placement and profile promotion are paid, so the agent you see is often the agent who bought that spot.
• HouseSigma operates its own brokerage. The platform is free because it converts users into clients of HouseSigma agents. Your choice of agent is effectively made for you.
• Zealty does not sell advertising or featured placement, and does not employ its own agents. It works with a vetted referral network drawn from brokerages across British Columbia, and earns a share of the commission only when a deal actually closes. Nobody can buy their way to the top of a listing. The selection criteria are public, and you can read exactly how agents are chosen before you speak to one.

None of these models is wrong. They just point in different directions. An advertising model rewards the agent who spends the most. An in-house brokerage model rewards its own roster. A referral model that only pays on a closed sale rewards the agent who actually gets the deal done.

Which Is the Best Real Estate Website in BC

If you want one platform to see listings in different provinces across the country, use REALTOR.ca. Use REW to learn neighbourhoods before you tour them, since its YouTube channel and area guides are worth the time, and to browse presales and rentals. Use HouseSigma if you are shopping across provinces or want its Chinese language experience.

For the part that decides how much you pay, which is history, comparables, building context and how fast you can filter down to the right shortlist, use Zealty.ca. Check the full listing history before you write an offer. Check what expired in that building last year. Check the assessed value against the ask. Check the commission.

Start on the Zealty map search or browse every active listing in BC. If you are researching a specific tower, the Strata Browser covers more than 18,000 BC buildings. For current conditions, the Metro Vancouver housing market page, the Surrey market page and the Burnaby market page are updated with live MLS data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which real estate website has the most accurate sold data in BC?

Sold data comes from the same MLS Systems regardless of the site, so accuracy is similar where it exists. Availability and source are what vary. Zealty and HouseSigma both publish MLS sold prices in British Columbia, with Zealty covering the Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley and Chilliwack and District board areas back to 2003. REALTOR.ca publishes sold prices where the local board has opted in, which has included Greater Vancouver since April 2025. REW publishes sale prices through its free Property Insights tool, but describes that data as aggregated from public sources including BC Assessment together with commercial sources, so it carries the sale number without the MLS listing history behind it.

Can I see expired listings in British Columbia?

Zealty and HouseSigma both show properties that came off the market without selling, which HouseSigma labels as de-listed. REALTOR.ca and REW remove the property from view entirely. Expired listings are useful because they show where a seller priced too high and where a property may return at a lower number.

Do these BC real estate portals cost anything?

All four are free for buyers and sellers. Most platforms, Zealty included, require a free account before showing sold and historical data, which is a condition of the MLS data licence rather than a subscription charge.

Which BC real estate portals have a mobile app?

Zealty, REALTOR.ca and HouseSigma all have iOS and Android apps. REW has no consumer app in either the App Store or Google Play as of September 2026. The Zealty app is free and has passed 10,000 downloads with more than 150 five star reviews in under four months.

What is the best AI home value estimate tool in Canada?

Offerland.ca builds the AI valuation engine behind OfferValue, works with Canadian banks and appraisal firms, and reports more than 300 market rent appraisals a day. OfferValue is what generates the estimated property value on every Zealty listing, so a regular buyer in British Columbia sees a figure produced by the same valuation infrastructure used in professional lending and appraisal workflows.

What is the best market rent estimate tool in Canada?

OfferRent, also built by Offerland.ca, is described by Offerland as the first and most used residential market rent valuation tool in Canada. It produces an estimated monthly market rent for a property, and because it sits on the same Zealty listing page as the OfferValue home value estimate, an investor can read both numbers together and calculate gross rental yield without leaving the page.

How accurate are AI home value estimates?

An automated valuation is a starting point, not an appraisal. Even the strongest model cannot see condition, renovations, view quality or strata health, and nothing replaces an appraiser walking the property. The practical approach is to take the OfferValue estimate, then check it against the full MLS price history and the strata data already on the listing before you decide what to offer.

Is HouseSigma or Zealty better for British Columbia?

Both show MLS price history, sold prices and properties that came off the market. HouseSigma covers Ontario, BC and Alberta, so it is the better choice for a cross-province search. Zealty is BC first and pulls ahead on advanced filters and sorting, which is what gets you to the right home faster, plus strata building pages for more than 18,000 BC buildings, a strata health widget that reads the building's documents for you, daily knowledge content, the ZONED weekly newsletter, and a cleaner, faster interface across web and app.

Search Metro Vancouver listings on Zealty, the best real estate website in BC for live MLS data, full price history and assessed values on every property. Subscribe to ZONED for the week in British Columbia real estate, and read the blog daily.