Housing | Spring 2026 rennie Landscape

This article is a section of the Spring 2026 edition of the rennie landscape, our semiannual report on the forces shaping housing markets in Metro Vancouver and across our key markets.

Each section of the landscape explores a different piece of the broader story—from interest rates and the economy to demographics, credit, and housing. Together, they provide context for understanding how these factors interact and what they mean for Metro Vancouver’s housing market.

Rental vacancy rates have been rising in British Columbia as a wave of new purpose-built supply comes online, although vacancy varies widely depending on price.
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AFFORDABLE BUT NOT ATTAINABLE; ATTAINABLE BUT NOT AFFORDABLE
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⁠Following a forty-year lull in purpose-built rental development, British Columbia has seen significant growth in new rental construction over the past decade. Across Metro Vancouver, new purpose-built rental completions reached nearly 11,000 in 2025, which was 48% higher than the 2024 total and previous record-high. This increase in new supply coming to market is the result of an elevated level of purpose-built rental apartment starts beginning in 2022 when BC was experiencing record-setting population growth. Now that this supply is hitting the market, BC’s population (as we discussed earlier) is shrinking.
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⁠The current environment of growing rental supply and waning rental demand—the departing non-permanent residents are overwhelmingly renters—has created conditions not seen before in this region since at least 1990 (the beginning of CMHC’s rental market data). The purpose-built rental vacancy rate in 2025 was 3.7%, which might rennie.com not seem particularly high to people in other parts of the country, but is a full percentage point higher than the previous record-high.
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⁠Within the market, vacancy rates can vary significantly by location, age of building, or rental rates. When we observe the vacancy rate for rent quartiles, an unsurprising but important pattern emerges: vacancy rates rise with rents. The most affordable rental homes have the tightest vacancy, while the most expensive have the highest. This is important for new projects coming to market, as they will mostly be competing with the most expensive homes for prospective tenants.

One benefit to tenants and landlords alike as homes within the top rental rate quartile get absorbed is filtering. Some of the tenants will be newcomers to the region, but others will be moving from within the market, freeing up lower-priced homes in the process to be rented out at current market rates.

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE?
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With housing markets across British Columbia comprising balanced and buyers’ markets, home prices have been softening. In order for prices to meaningfully rise, sales would need to increase substantially.
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⁠For most of 2025, the Vancouver Region was a balanced housing market per the months-ofinventory metric (MOI). Balanced conditions in the Vancouver Region are considered to be between 5.0 and 8.0 MOI. More recently, the market has tipped into buyers’ market territory at 11.0 MOI as of January. While prices can rise in balanced market conditions, generally sustained price growth is observed when MOI trends towards the bottom of balanced territory: 5.0 MOI.
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⁠Based on the amount of available inventory to start the year in the Vancouver Region (18,540), and typical seasonality, we can calculate that it would take around 55,000 MLS transactions to bring MOI down to 5.0 by the end of 2026—a 57% increase over 2025. That tally is unlikely to be reached, suggesting that MOI will remain elevated through 2026 and prices are likely to soften further, as we explore in the next section.

PROJECTING THE PATH OF PRICES
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Condo prices have been on a series of mini-recoveries and drops since falling from their 2022 peak. Don’t expect a return to the previous high-water mark in 2026.
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It’s been a rough ride for condo prices in the Vancouver Region since peaking in May of 2022 at $731,700. After the initial shock of quickly rising interest rates, condo prices fell 9%, before recovering most of the drop in value within a year. Since then, values have fluctuated but trended downward to 90% of peak value at the end of 2025. This downturn stands out relative to previous price cycles in the region. The recovery from the 2008 downturn was swift, and the recovery from the 2017 downturn was cut short by ultra-low interest rates in response to the pandemic.
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As we noted in the previous section, the Vancouver Region began 2026 in a buyers’ market. With elevated inventory and our own forecast for MLS sales at 38,000, we expect condo prices to decline a further 4% in 2026. That would put benchmark condo values at 86% of their previous peak value, 55 months into the downturn.
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THE BEST OF INTENTIONS
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Homebuying intentions remain robust across housing markets in British Columbia, even as sales counts have been suppressed for the past few years.
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Affordability has materially improved across housing markets in BC over the past few years. As we noted in previous sections, interest rates and home prices have both fallen. Homebuying activity, however, hasn’t picked up. That begs the question, is it because few people are interested in buying a home? Not according to the latest rennie Homes of Tomorrow survey which surveyed adults across Metro Vancouver, Greater Victoria, and the Central Okanagan.
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⁠Vancouver had the highest rate of respondents who intend to buy a home in the next three years at 35%, followed by Victoria at 22%, and Kelowna at 20%. We know that not all of these people will ultimately transact, but these responses equate to nearly 380,000 households across Metro Vancouver, 40,000 households in Greater Victoria, and 20,000 households in the Central Okanagan, indicating a desire to purchase a home within three years.
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⁠Those aged 35 to 54 had the highest homebuying intentions in both Vancouver and Kelowna, although in Victoria it’s the youngest adults that are most eager to purchase a home. While overall homebuying intentions point to pent-up demand, the types of homes and amenities buyers and renters are looking for vary and understanding them is key to delivering the type of housing people want.

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