Vancouver Island Just Flipped to a Buyer's Market. Officially.
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Metro Vancouver's Apartment Market Just Collapsed in September. The Rest of the Market Held.
GVR September numbers landed this week. Apartment sales fell 18.6 percent year over year. Detached sales actually rose 4.2 percent. Attached sales rose 0.6 percent. The slump is almost entirely in the condo segment.Total sales came in at 1,717, down 8.4 percent YoY and 25 percent below the 10-year seasonal average. Apartment benchmark price now sits at $682,500, down 6.2 percent YoY. The sales-to-active ratio hit 10.9 percent, below the 12 percent floor that GVR links to sustained downward price pressure.GVR Chief Economist Andrew Lis called it directly: the weakness is "contained to the sizeable apartment segment," and end users (not investors) are driving what's left of the market. Which is exactly the inventory Eby wants to tax.Read the Canadian Mortgage Professional report →
Best insured 5-year fixed in Canada climbed to 4.34 percent on October 7, up 25 basis points in 7 days and 30bps over the past month. Best insured 5-year variable fell to 3.25 percent, down 15bps on the week.The spread between fixed and variable just widened to 109bps. Last time it was this wide was the 2022 to 2023 hiking cycle.Translation: the bond market and the Bank of Canada are telling two different stories. Every reader with a 2026 renewal or refinance just saw their math flip. If you were waiting to lock, this week you waited too long on fixed. If you were debating variable, this week it got cheaper.Check WOWA mortgage rates →
Vancouver Island Just Flipped to a Buyer's Market. Officially.
VIREB CEO Jason Yochim said it out loud this week. September 2026 numbers landed and the shift is now formal: townhouse sales down 36 percent year over year, condo sales down 7 percent, single-family sales down 8 percent. Active listings up 4 percent to 4,457.Benchmark prices turned too. Single-family down 1 percent to $777,300. Apartments down 4 percent to $401,700. The pullback is sharpest outside the capital: Comox Valley saw 37 sales in September, down 37.3 percent YoY. Campbell River saw 26, down 21.2 percent.First BC region to be formally declared a buyer's market by its own board CEO this cycle. The correction we have been tracking in West Van and in Metro's apartment segment is now hopping the Strait.Read the Comox Valley Record coverage →
Investor's Scoreboard
Rates Split This Week. So Did the Math.Fixed rates climbed to 4.34% this week. Variable fell to 3.25% (Story 2). For the first time in this section, which product you lock matters as much as which property you buy.#204 at 1526 George Street in White Rock, at $349,000. A 2 bed, 2 bath, 856 sqft condo at $408 per square foot. OfferValue® estimates the unit at $367,000. The seller is asking $18,000 below the model. The 2022 attempt at this address listed at $499,000 and terminated unsold. The relist in September is 30 percent below that number. The seller has given up on 2022 pricing.At 20% down and today's best insured 5 year fixed of 4.34%, all-in monthly carry is $2,416 (mortgage $1,520 + strata $675 + tax $221). OfferRent® estimates rent at $2,800. After ~$533 in principal paydown, your real monthly cost is $1,883, leaving +$917 in effective cash flow plus $533 in equity build. Cash-on-cash ~15.8%, gross yield 9.6%.At today's best insured 5 year variable of 3.25%, the same unit all-in costs $2,253 a month (mortgage $1,357 + strata $675 + tax $221). After ~$619 in principal paydown, your real monthly cost is $1,634, leaving +$1,166 in effective cash flow plus $619 in equity build. Cash-on-cash ~20.0%.Over four percentage points of return on cash depending on which product you lock. That is what a 109bps spread does to investor math. What is unchanged: a 2 bed 2 bath priced $18,000 below OfferValue in a White Rock beach rental market, at a yield that works on either side of the mortgage decision.
The Condo Correction Just Hit Coal Harbour.#1904 at 1616 Bayshore Drive, Vancouver (Coal Harbour) at $1,349,000. A 2 bed, 2 bath, 1,258 sqft condo at $1,072 per square foot.Story 1 told us the apartment segment is where Metro Vancouver's correction is landing: sales down 18.6 percent, benchmark down 6.2 percent year over year. This week's foreclosure board has the trophy version of the same story.Bayshore Drive runs along the seawall between Stanley Park and the Westin. The buildings here are mostly investor owned and tenant occupied, bought during the 2016 to 2021 run when any Coal Harbour square foot felt bulletproof. Nineteenth floor, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, water on one side and Stanley Park on the other.$1,072 per sqft is still Coal Harbour pricing. It is just not 2021 Coal Harbour pricing. If you had told any investor in that window that this unit would list at this number three years later, you would have been laughed out of the strata meeting.The condo correction we have been tracking all month just arrived at the top of the market.
Foreclosed Condo in BC: Strata Arrears and Special Levies
132 condos are listed as BC court-ordered sales. Who pays the former owner's strata fees, which special levy instalments become yours, and what the Form B shows before you bid.
Hamidreza Etebarian - October 7, 2026
There are 132 condos listed as court-ordered sales in the BC regions Zealty covers today, October 7, 2026, and 63 of them ask under $500,000. The cheapest is a two-bedroom in Chilliwack at $189,000. For comparison, the median asking price across all 8,159 active condos in Metro Vancouver is $639,900. A foreclosed condo carries one cost that a
Turn On the Schools Layer. See Every School on the Map.
House hunting is really neighbourhood hunting, and the first question most buyers ask about a neighbourhood is which school catchment they land in.On the Zealty map you can turn on a schools layer and see every school in Metro Vancouver as a pin, right next to the listings. Click the Layers button at the bottom of the map, switch on Schools, and every school lights up. Flip it off when you want the map clean again.
A Point Grey Trophy With Its Own Tennis Court.4777 W 2nd Avenue, Vancouver (Point Grey) — $10,888,000• A private tennis court on the lot. Point Grey has beaches, trails, UBC on one side and Jericho on the other, but a court inside the fence remains a scarce flex in Vancouver proper. You could count the residential ones left west of Main on your fingers.• 8,228 sqft of house. That is Shaughnessy sized on Point Grey land. $1,323 per square foot, which is roughly the going rate on this stretch of W 2nd and feels like a bargain next to the Golden Mile from Issue 25.• 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms. Enough bedrooms for the whole family. Enough bathrooms that nobody has to time the morning coffee.• Blocks from Jericho Beach, the Vancouver Lawn Tennis & Badminton Club, Pacific Spirit Park, and the UBC gates. The address does the heavy lifting on quality of life before you walk through the front door.• This is the segment that did not collapse this month. Story 1 said Metro's detached sales actually rose 4.2 percent year over year in September while apartments fell 18.6 percent. This is what strength at the top of the market looks like in real time.If your Sunday starts with a backhand and ends with a swim at Jericho, the walk from here is six blocks.
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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