Eby Just Proposed a Tax on Unsold Condos. Developers Are in Open Revolt.
West Van Now Has 2.3 Years of Supply Above $4 Million.
The Presale Market Just Broke. Two Projects Launched in August.
Investor's Scoreboard
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Housing Market Update
Metro Vancouver · September 30, 2026
For Sale Inventory:
20,573
New Listing:
7,509
Median Sale to List Ratio:
95.7%
Median Sale Price:
$949,900
Sold Properties:
2,289
% Sold Over Asking:
6.5%
Median Days on the Market:
29 days
The Takeaway
20,573 homes for sale, up 604 from August as sellers started putting listings back on after the summer pullback. 2,289 sold, which is 11.1% of inventory moving in the month, down from 12.1% in August, so buyers stepped back another notch too. Median price pushed up $34,900 to $949,900, which is the only up-and-to-the-right stat on the page: days on market stuck at 29, only 6.5% sold over asking (barely moved), and the sale to list ratio sat at 95.7%. More sellers, fewer buyers, same wait, less competition. Prices climbed. Everything else cooled.
Eby Just Proposed a Tax on Unsold Condos. Developers Are in Open Revolt.
Premier David Eby introduced a 2 percent tax on completed condo units that sit vacant for a full year, escalating by 1 percent every year after. The target: developers holding unsold inventory. UDI and BILD came out swinging within hours, calling it a policy that punishes housing supply during a supply crisis.The timing is not an accident. Eby dropped the tax in the middle of a snap election called for October 24. NDP support fell 12 points on the announcement. The BC Conservatives now lead by 8 points. Housing just became the campaign issue.If it passes, every developer sitting on a completed but unsold tower has a new clock ticking against them. If it dies with the election, it becomes the ghost policy every future NDP platform gets asked about.Read the full rundown →
West Van Now Has 2.3 Years of Supply Above $4 Million.
Sotheby's just released the numbers on West Van luxury. 195 residential properties listed above $4M as of September 1. That is 2.3 years of inventory at current absorption speed.Year over year sales above $4M dropped 25 percent. In the first 8 months of 2025, 76 luxury properties sold. In the same window of 2026, only 57 did. One in seven luxury sales are happening off market entirely, which means the visible pain is understated.Managing broker Kevin O'Toole put it plainly: sellers need to be realistic on pricing, conditions, and timeframes to attract qualified buyers. In West Van speak, that means the price cut is coming.Read the Storeys piece →
The Presale Market Just Broke. Two Projects Launched in August.
MLA Canada tracked the Lower Mainland presale market in August and found 2 project launches with 76 total units combined. That is not a slow month. That is a system failure. In a normal August across the past decade, that number is usually 10 to 20 launches.The receivership side of the same story: Maskeen's Langley tower sold from National Bank receivership for $6.4 million. Maskeen's Surrey Victory project also sold from MCAP receivership. The developer bloodbath continues.Presale is where every future condo gets funded. If nobody is launching and lenders are taking projects back, the pipeline shrinks. Which explains why the province wants to tax completed inventory: they see the same signal, and they are trying to force what remains onto the market.Read the full rundown →
Investor's Scoreboard
A Downtown Vancouver Seller Cut $170,000. And They're Still Waiting for a Buyer.While West Van sits on 2.3 years of $4M+ inventory (Story 2), downtown Vancouver has its own version of the same story at a different price point. #302 at 921 Thurlow Street, in the West End. Listed March 2025 at $599,900. Cut to $450,000. Cut again this month to $429,900. Eighteen months on market, 28 percent below original ask, still no buyer.A 1 bed, 1 bath, 600 sqft condo at Thurlow and Barclay in a 1988 building, $717 per square foot. Balcony, one underground parking stall.At 20% down and today's best insured 5 year fixed of 4.22%, all-in monthly carry is $2,434 (mortgage $1,850 + strata $433 + tax $151). OfferRent® estimates rent at $3,290. After ~$666 in principal paydown, your real monthly cost is $1,768, leaving +$1,522 in effective cash flow plus $666 in equity build. Cash-on-cash ~21.2%, gross yield 9.2%.Wider than what the average West End investor would have penciled at any point in the last decade. That is what 18 months of price cuts does to yield math. What is unchanged: a 600 sqft one bed in downtown Vancouver's densest rental market, one block from Robson, three from English Bay, with yield math that used to require a Fraser Valley postal code.
$376 Per Square Foot for a 7 Bedroom House in Surrey.15077 86b Avenue, Surrey (Bear Creek Green Timbers) at $1,115,370. A 7 bed, 4 bath, 2,966 sqft family home.Do that math again. Two thousand nine hundred sixty six square feet, seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, on a quiet street in central Surrey backing onto Green Timbers Urban Forest. $376 per square foot.That is not a Whalley tower unit. That is not a laneway. That is a proper detached family home at townhouse pricing.Bear Creek Green Timbers is family Surrey. School catchment territory, forest at the back, cul de sac quiet. The kind of pocket where buyers were stretching for the space, not the cash flow.Same story as Palmerston Dundarave (Issue 24) and Otter District Langley (Issue 25). Rate renewal at 4.22 percent instead of 1.94 percent, on a house nobody is willing to pay yesterday's price for. The 2.3 years of West Van luxury supply from Story 2 is the same story with a different postal code.The forced sellers are working their way inland.
In BC, April homes typically sell in 16 days, compared with 26 in December. Sale prices show far less seasonal variation, while spring puts more competing homes on the market.
Hamidreza Etebarian - August 26, 2026
Across three years of sold records, from July 2023 to June 2026, homes sold for a median 97.8% to 98.1% of asking price in every month. The seasonal difference is mainly speed: spring can bring a faster sale, alongside more competing listings. Pricing and presentation matter more than the month you choose.
This week's map update: a way to see the map edge to edge, with no sidebar at all.Grab the vertical handle on the right side of the sidebar and drag it all the way to the right. The sidebar collapses. Every pin, every neighborhood, no clutter. Just the map.Drag the handle back when you want the sidebar again. Everything is one gesture away.
The Vancouver Address Where Nobody Can Hear You Close a Deal.15 Brunswick Beach Road, Lions Bay — $17,800,0005 bed · 5 bath · 4,900 sqft · Direct oceanfrontLions Bay is a village of roughly 1,300 people on Howe Sound, halfway between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish. If you have never heard of it, that is precisely the point.Brunswick Beach is one of the few sand beaches on the entire Howe Sound shoreline. Most of the coast here is granite. This house sits directly on the sand.4,900 sqft of oceanfront living where the only rush hour is the tide.Vancouver commute: 35 minutes down the Sea to Sky when nobody else is on the road. Everyone else is driving the other way toward Whistler. You are driving toward downtown, past the ocean, on one of the most photographed highways on earth.The listing has been on market for over three years. That is not a failure. That is a filter. This address does not sell in a bidding war. It waits for the exact person.Same postal code as: eagles, orcas, and roughly zero commuters trying to pass you.If your definition of a Vancouver waterfront home involves neighbours you can see from the kitchen window, keep scrolling. If it does not, this might be the one.
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.
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