Ottawa-BC Announce $3.2B Housing Deal — Includes “Developer Bailout” Condo Conversion Plan
Vancouver Developer Lets You “Try Before You Buy” — Spend a Weekend in the Condo First
Property Tax Due July 2/3 — Don't Forget the Home Owner Grant
Investor's Scoreboard
Hot Foreclosure
Selected Blog Post
Feature Spotlight
Listing We Love
What Real Estate Creators are Talking About This Week
The Big Three
Ottawa-BC Announce $3.2B Housing Deal — Includes “Developer Bailout” Condo Conversion Plan
On June 18, Prime Minister Carney and Premier Eby announced the Canada-British Columbia Partnership on Condo Conversion: a federal-provincial plan to buy 2,200 vacant strata condos from private developers and convert them to affordable housing. Plus $3.2 billion over 10 years to cut development charges by up to 50%, and a $284-million federal transfer to BC. Critics are already calling it a taxpayer-funded developer bailout. Goodman Commercial's Mark Goodman told Daily Hive the program could “wipe out more than half the current overhang in Metro Vancouver,” where 4,376 completed condos sit unsold (up 76% year-over-year). Few details have been released on how affordability will be defined, where the homes will be bought, or what developers will be paid.
Vancouver Developer Lets You “Try Before You Buy” — Spend a Weekend in the Condo First
A novel try-before-you-buy program is letting prospective Vancouver homebuyers stay a full weekend at a Vancouver condo development before deciding whether to put down an offer. Buyers get the keys, sleep in the bedroom, cook in the kitchen, and live with the building's quirks for two nights before signing anything. A first-of-its-kind program in BC, and one of the more creative responses to the inventory glut: Metro Vancouver is sitting on 4,376 completed unsold condos right now, up 76% year-over-year. When buyers won't commit, developers are finding new ways to lower the cost of saying yes.
Property Tax Due July 2/3 — Don't Forget the Home Owner Grant
BC property tax notices have landed and the payment deadline is just over a week away: Surrey, Coquitlam, Richmond and Maple Ridge are due July 2; Vancouver and Burnaby are due July 3. Miss it and a 5% penalty hits the unpaid portion. The Home Owner Grant is the easiest savings most BC homeowners forget to claim, but the 2026 threshold dropped to $2.075 million (down $100,000 from 2025, the first reduction since 2020), so check your assessment before assuming you qualify. Properties at or below the threshold get up to $570 (basic) or up to $845 (seniors, veterans, or persons with disabilities). The grant is not automatic and you have to apply every year.
Downtown Vancouver. $349K. No Rental Restrictions. Walk to English Bay.Cash-flow-positive downtown Vancouver is supposed to be impossible. Anchor Point II at 1330 Burrard pulls it off, and #313 is asking $349,000 for a 1-bed, 480 sqft — that's $727 per square foot in a market where the downtown median is $1,100. No rental restrictions. No age restrictions. You can rent it the day you close. At 20% down on the best rate, all-in monthly carry is $1,782 (mortgage $1,342 + strata $326 + tax $114). OfferRent estimates this unit at $2,080. That's +$298/month in your pocket, plus around $460/month in principal paydown. Year 1 cash-on-cash including equity: ~11.9%. Gross yield: 7.15%. The catch: 1979 building, 480 sqft is compact, the view is interior-facing, no pets allowed. Pull the depreciation report and budget for periodic special assessments. The trade is a downtown Vancouver address inside the SkyTrain walk-shed, half a block from the seawall, at 34% below the downtown $/sqft median.
A Furry Creek weekend retreat just lost $750,000In August 2022, someone bought a 3,599 square foot townhouse on Beach Drive in Furry Creek for $2.3 million. Howe Sound views. Five bathrooms. A short walk to the beach, a shorter drive to the golf course. The kind of weekend address you only need to explain by saying the name. Three and a half years later, the lender is court-listing it at $1.55 million. That is a $750,000 paper loss. A 33% drop in under four years on a property that was supposed to be the ultimate Sea-to-Sky escape. The cheap-money cycle didn't only catch buyers downtown.
What the Agent Won't Mention at the ShowingThe seller's agent will tell you about the new paint, the new appliances, and the quiet neighbours' kids. They won't mention that this exact listing was here four weeks ago at $200,000 more, then terminated, then quietly relisted. On Zealty, every active listing comes with its full MLS Pricing History — every list date, every price cut, every termination, every relisting. Scroll down on any property and the seller's actual starting point is right there. The story before the story.
Two Penthouses. One Address.#1503/04 at 283 Davie Street in Yaletown is two penthouses someone connected — a 4,236 sqft floor plan you can't find by accident. Four bedrooms, three baths, $3,988,000. Big enough for the extended family at Christmas, small enough that you're still living downtown. False Creek out the windows. Mainland Street out the front door. Penthouse scale at penthouse views, without the off-grid penthouse-tower price tag.
Hamidreza Etebarian leads the editorial process behind Zealty’s content. He works directly with the team to shape everything from market reports to general real estate guides into clear, reliable, and decision-focused pieces.
The Holywell Properties brokerage, powered by advanced Zealty software, is your partner in making well-informed real estate decisions. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy apply. This message is not intended to solicit clients currently under contract with another licensed real estate brokerage. As always, if you’d rather not get emails like this, you can unsubscribe.