What Expired Listings Tell You About the BC Market in 2026

In the 90 days to 27 July 2026, 7,853 residential properties sold in British Columbia and 14,941 came off the market without selling. Nearly two failures for every sale. Those 14,941 listings are the most honest data in the market, because they record exactly where sellers set a price that no buyer would meet. Almost every buyer and seller ignores them in favour of sold prices, which show only the transactions that worked. Here is what the failures reveal about pricing in British Columbia right now.

Failed Listings Outnumber Sales Almost Two to One

The 14,941 figure splits three ways. There were 9,146 terminated listings, where the seller ended the agreement early. There were 3,513 that ran all the way to formal expiry. And 2,282 were cancel-protected, a variation on early cancellation.

Against that, 7,853 homes sold in the same period. The ratio matters more than the raw numbers: for every home that found a buyer, roughly two sellers pulled out or ran out of time.

Expired Listings Sat for 175 Days

Listings that ran to full expiry averaged 175 days on market. Terminated listings averaged 75 days, and cancel-protected ones 79 days.

Homes that sold averaged 37 days from listing to sale. The gap between 37 and 175 is the entire story of pricing in this market. A correctly priced BC home transacts inside about five weeks. A home priced above the market can sit for the better part of a year and still not sell.

Most Expired Listings Never Cut Their Price

Only 1,314 of the 3,513 expired listings, about 37 percent, had reduced their asking price at any point before the listing ended. Nearly two-thirds held their original number the whole way through and then came off the market.

That is the central lesson for sellers. These homes did not fail because the market rejected a fair price. They failed because the price was never tested against what buyers were actually paying, and the seller waited rather than adjusted.

Compare that with sold homes: 26.5 percent of BC sales in the same window had cut their price at least once, and the ones that never needed to cut sold in an average of 24 days.

What Buyers Can Do With Expired Data

An expired listing tells you the ceiling. If a home two doors down asked $1,450,000 for six months and never sold, then $1,450,000 is above the market for that street, regardless of what the current listing says.