What BC Foreclosures Actually Sold For in 2026

• Detached: a median $482 per square foot for foreclosures against $574 for ordinary sales, 16.1% below, across 182 sales.
• Townhouses: $465 against $571, 18.5% below, across 55 sales.
• Condos: $701 against $779, 10.0% below, across 155 sales.

That range sits inside the 10% to 20% figure our guide to finding and buying foreclosure properties in BC has used for years. Townhouses carry the widest gap and condos the narrowest.

Almost nobody negotiates one down

Here is the finding that catches experienced buyers. Foreclosures sold closer to their asking price than ordinary listings did, in every property type we measured:

• Detached: 99.0% of ask for foreclosures, 96.4% for ordinary sales.
• Townhouses: 98.6% against 97.8%.
• Condos: 100.0% against 97.2%.

The share that cleared the asking price outright is starker. Of the 182 detached foreclosure sales, 44.0% closed at or above ask, against 11.8% of the 11,777 ordinary detached sales. On condos, it was 50.3% against 14.6%. Townhouses ran 30.9% against 18.8%.

The gap between the two has widened as the wider market cooled. Ordinary sellers lost their pricing power, while foreclosure sellers held onto theirs:

• 2023: 59.1% of foreclosures closed at or above ask, against 39.6% of ordinary sales, a 19.5-point gap.
• 2024: 44.8% against 30.5%, a 14.3 point gap.
• 2025: 38.6% against 19.8%, an 18.8 point gap.
• 2026: 45.7% against 15.1%, a 30.6 point gap.

The path is not a straight line, but the four-year direction is. In plain terms, a detached foreclosure was almost four times as likely to sell for at least its asking price as an ordinary listing was, and half of foreclosure condo sales went at or above ask. A strategy built on finding a court-ordered sale and offering well under the list price is a strategy for losing the property.

Why those two findings are not a contradiction

The two results only clash if you assume the asking price on a foreclosure works the way it does on a normal listing. It does not.

On an ordinary sale, the owner sets the price, usually with negotiating room built in, and the discount is argued out between buyer and seller after the listing goes up. A court-ordered sale in British Columbia has to be approved by the Supreme Court, and the approval hearing is a public proceeding where a competing buyer can put a sealed bid in front of the judge. Under the Supreme Court of British Columbia's Practice Direction 66, which took effect on 3 March 2025 and was updated on 31 March 2026, sealed bids must be collected and assembled in the courtroom by 9:45 a.m. on the day of the hearing, and it is left to the judge whether to consider anything that arrives later. The list price behaves like an opening bid rather than a ceiling.

So the discount gets applied at the front of the process rather than the back. The property is priced to attract a court-ready buyer in a market that can see exactly what it is looking at, and the hearing then bids it back up toward, and frequently past, that number. What the winning buyer captures is a gap to market value, not a gap to the asking price. Those are different things, and confusing them is what produces the failed lowball offer.

The tactics for the hearing itself are a separate subject, covered in our bidding strategy for BC court-ordered sales, and the legal sequence has its own walkthrough in our guide to the BC foreclosure process. Neither replaces advice from your own lawyer, and every court-ordered purchase should have one.

They take about three times as long to sell

Time is the other price you pay. Measured from listing date to sold date on completed sales over the 12 months to 31 July 2026, the median was:

• Detached: 76 days for foreclosures, 25 days for ordinary sales.
• Townhouses: 77 days against 22.
• Condos: 49 days against 25.

Some areas ran much slower than that. Foreclosure sales in New Westminster took a median 113 days, Burnaby North 108 and Mission 100, though each of those rests on fewer than ten sales. At the quick end, North Surrey cleared in a median 41 days and Burnaby South in 49.

Those timelines matter most for financing, because a rate hold does not sit still for four months and lenders treat a court-ordered purchase on its own terms. Our guide to financing a foreclosure in BC covers that side. They also matter if you are selling something to fund the purchase, because a quarter of the year can disappear between the accepted offer and the keys.

Where they sold, and what is listed right now

Foreclosure sales landed across every price band, not only at the cheap end. By region over the 12 months to 31 July 2026, showing the number of foreclosure sales, the median sold price and the median days to sell:

• Vancouver West: 65 sales, $1,303,890, 63 days.
• Surrey: 46 sales, $1,180,000, 75 days.
• North Surrey: 39 sales, $549,900, 41 days.
• Abbotsford: 28 sales, $930,000, 70 days.
• Richmond: 22 sales, $660,000, 62 days.
• Langley: 21 sales, $831,000, 88 days.
• Vancouver East: 20 sales, $930,000, 74 days.
• Cloverdale: 12 sales, $1,142,000, 64 days.
• West Vancouver: 11 sales, $2,255,000, 65 days.

West Vancouver's median foreclosure sale was $2,255,000 and North Surrey's was $549,900, just over a four-fold spread inside one dataset. Vancouver West alone produced 65 sales, the largest single count. Foreclosure follows the owner's finances, not the postal code, and a buyer who only watches the low end of the market will miss most of the volume.

The pipeline behind those sales is still full. There are just over 400 active court-ordered residential listings across the three boards as of 17 August 2026, split roughly 240 detached, 107 condos and 54 townhouses. You can see the live set with the court-ordered sale filter on Zealty's map search.

How to price a foreclosure before you bid

The numbers point to a specific method, and it is close to the opposite of what most buyers do.

• Value it per square foot, not off the list price. Work out what ordinary sales of the same type and size in that area have been closing at per square foot, then check whether the foreclosure asking price already reflects the 10% to 19% gap. Our walkthrough on reading sold comps covers the method.
• Budget upward from the asking price. More than four in ten detached foreclosure buyers paid at or above ask, so treat the list price as your starting point and decide in advance how far past it the property is still worth buying.
• Read the full price history first. A property that has already been relisted at a lower number is telling you the earlier prices were wrong, and a competing bidder can see the same thing. You can pull the complete listing, price change, and sold record for any property we cover with our price history tool.
• Plan for 76 days, not 25. Line up financing and any sale of your own against the slower timeline rather than the ordinary one.
• Assume no seller warranties. A court-ordered sale is sold as is, where is, and the lender selling it has usually never lived in the property, so budget for an inspection and for what an inspection cannot see.

Bottom Line

Foreclosures in southwestern British Columbia do sell below market. Over the 12 months to 31 July 2026, the gap ran 16.1% below on detached homes, 18.5% on townhouses and 10.0% on condos, measured per square foot. What they do not do is sell below their asking price. At 99.0% of ask on detached and 100.0% on condos, with 44.0% and 50.3% respectively closing at or above the asking price, the list price on a court-ordered sale behaves like a floor with a queue behind it.

There is also simply more of it. At 232 sales in seven months and 1.10% of all residential sales, court-ordered listings are a bigger share of the market than at any point in our records back to 2019, and more of them are condos than before. Buy one for what it is worth against comparable sales, be ready to pay list or a little more to get it, and give yourself a quarter of a year to close.