real (estate) talk | February 2025

Every January, rennie’s intelligence department publishes the rennie outlook, a collection of forecasts for the year ahead on various dimensions of the economy and the local housing market. Our latest edition sees improving real estate activity in the Vancouver Region this year as the market continues to navigate its way out of the high-inflation, high-interest-rate environment that tempered activity in recent years. Following a small increase in resale transactions last year (up 0.6% to 40,160 MLS sales), we expect a more robust rise in 2025, to 50,000 sales. Stronger resale activity will be supported by lower borrowing costs, more favourable CMHC insurance rules, two-plus years of pent-up demand, and more active listings than we’ve seen in over a decade. 

Meanwhile, higher pre-sale counts are also expected in 2025. Following a five-year low of 9,740 in 2024, we forecast 12,200 pre-sales across the region this year. This would represent an increase of 25% year-over-year but would still fall 19% short of the past-decade average. Housing completions are forecast to hit a record 29,000 in the wake of years of elevated construction activity, while housing starts are expected to decline for the second consecutive year, to 24,500. Details on these forecasts—as well as on a series of other elements from population, to rents, to interest rates and home prices—can all be found in the 2025 rennie outlook.

One important caveat of our forecasts is that they do not reflect the potentially significant economic impacts that could arise from a trade war with the US, including reduced output, higher inflation, higher interest rates, and a weaker dollar. On February 3rd, Canada narrowly avoided a blanket 25% tariff on all exports to the US (and a lower 10% tariff on energy products) after agreeing to increase security at the Canada-US border. The expectation is that the deal gives Canada until March 1st to negotiate a more permanent solution to keep intact the $1 trillion in annual bilateral trade that is foundational to the Canadian economy. Statistics Canada data shows that Canada exported $591 billion of goods and services to the US in 2024 (including $170 billion of energy products), which accounted for 76% of Canada’s total exports.

How things ultimately unfold remains to be seen, but the reality is that tariffs would have severe repercussions for not only the Canadian economy, but the US economy, too. This reality should, hopefully, prevent a more serious deterioration in trade relations between the two countries. Should cooler heads ultimately prevail, then the Vancouver housing market is poised for a continued recovery in 2025, building on January’s MLS sales counts, which increased year-over-year for the fourth consecutive month to 2,334. More notably, there were 8,734 new listings, the most for the month of January in at least two decades. It seems clear that buyers and sellers are eager to transact—fingers crossed that this latest bout of (tariff-driven) uncertainty is just a minor Trump in the road. 

The rennie review is a monthly publication that includes our take on the latest MLS data for the Vancouver Region. In addition to presenting neighbourhood-level stats, it includes information on current rennie projects, a selection of featured listings, and insightful commentary on how and why the market is changing.

Our rennie intelligence team comprises our senior economist, market analysts, and business intelligence analysts. 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, and Seattle marketplaces. Their thoughtful and objective approach embodies the core values of rennie.