Thank you for taking the time to read the Fall 2026 edition of the rennie landscape.
We continue to face more than our fair share of challenges nationally and here at home. Our economic headwinds are plentiful and our local housing markets continue to sag—so much so that you’ll notice we’ve retired the term “pre-sale market” in favour of “new-home market.” For decades, the pre-sale condo was the vehicle for transacting a new home. Now, it’s completed inventory, and increasingly townhome inventory, selling to end-user buyers.
Elsewhere, the word of the season might be “whiplash,” and we use it begrudgingly. Tariffs have been on, then off, then on again, then up for negotiation, then very much back on the table—sometimes all in the same week. At this point we’ve given up trying to forecast the next iteration and gone back to just watching the data, which, refreshingly, is a Canadian economy holding up amongst all the chaos. Provincial politics are offering a little chaos of their own, as BC voters head back to the polls two years earlier than expected.
We are keeping a wary eye on inflation and bond markets, and homebuyers would be wise to do the same. Inflation has climbed on higher energy prices. Yields have been drifting up—fixed rates tend to trail along behind them—adding to the headwinds the housing market is facing. This is a useful reminder that even though the Bank of Canada has held its overnight rate for now, mortgage rates have risen.
On the brighter side, the labour market has quietly found its legs again, adding jobs at a clip that’s finally outpacing population growth—genuinely good news for household formation, and eventually, for housing demand. And the rental market keeps doing what it’s quietly done for a few years now: absorb increasingly large numbers of deliveries, with more on the horizon.
As always, we hope this edition helps make sense of a market that refuses to sit still.
Readers in the Vancouver Region can access content specific to their region in the Vancouver Fall 2026 rennie landscape. Similarly, Greater Victoria readers can find region-specific content by visiting the Victoria Fall 2026 rennie landscape.
Twice a year, rennie intelligence produces the rennie landscape, which tracks a variety of demographic and economic indicators that directly and indirectly influence the housing markets of Metro Vancouver, Greater Victoria, and the Central Okanagan. Our goal is to provide our community with a basis for evaluating the trajectory of the factors that collectively define the context of the real estate market.
Our rennie Intelligence Division comprises our chief economist, market analysts, and data scientists. Together, they empower individuals, organizations, and institutions with data-driven market insight and analysis. Experts in real estate dynamics, urban land economics, the macroeconomy, shifting demographics, and data science, their industry-leading data acquisition, analytical systems, and strategic research supports a comprehensive advisory service and forms the basis of frequent reports and public presentations, covering the Vancouver, Kelowna, Victoria, Seattle, and Coachella Valley marketplaces. Their thoughtful and objective approach embodies the core values of rennie.
