Vancouver enters 2026 at a rare crossroads. Home prices have slipped to a three-year low, annual sales volumes have fallen to levels not seen in a quarter century, and yet Canadians brought a record number of homes to market in 2025. The disconnect between supply and demand is no longer theoretical—it’s visible across prices, borrowing behaviour, and broader economic indicators.

Beneath the surface, household balance sheets are doing more of the heavy lifting. While transaction activity remains subdued, borrowing against housing has accelerated. Recent national data shows home equity line of credit (HELOC) balances climbing to nearly $180 billion, the highest level in six years, after a decade-long pullback. Credit itself isn’t inherently problematic—many homeowners use it productively to renovate or reinvest—but the concern today is why borrowing is rising while sales slow. When leverage grows to cover higher living costs or to refinance other debt, risk accumulates quietly. The current pattern bears uncomfortable similarities to 2017, when investor-led borrowing rose amid soft resale activity and a wave of new supply.

Commercial real estate tells a parallel story of recalibration. Downtown Vancouver office vacancy rose to 12.8% by the end of 2025—the highest level in over twenty years—driven largely by oversupply from recent project deliveries and a continued “flight to quality.” Older Class B and C buildings now sit near 18% vacancy, while top-tier space remains comparatively resilient. Construction has slowed sharply, signalling that the market is adjusting, not collapsing. Even so, Vancouver remains one of Canada’s most structurally resilient office markets, with vacancy still below Toronto and Ottawa.

Early warning signs are also emerging in household stress metrics. Mortgage arrears in Canada reached a five-year high late last year. British Columbia remains below the national average, but at its highest level in six years. With more than one million mortgages set to renew in 2026—many at higher payments—this pressure is unlikely to ease quickly.

A comparison with Toronto underscores Vancouver’s uniqueness. GTA sales also fell to a 25-year low, but inventory there has surged to record highs and prices are now down roughly 27% from the 2022 peak. Vancouver’s correction has been more measured—but persistent.

Locally, December data reinforces the theme. Sales volumes remain well below historical norms, inventory is at a 12-year high for this time of year, and days on market have stretched to levels last seen in 2019. Prices continue to drift lower: the benchmark index is down for the ninth consecutive month, returning values to early-2023 levels, with detached, townhomes, and condos all sharing similar declines.

Looking back, 2025 closed with the fewest home sales since 2000—yet also the highest number of listings on record. That imbalance sets the table for 2026: a market with abundant choice for buyers and intensified competition for sellers. What happens next will hinge on confidence—both in household finances and in the broader economic outlook.

Next week, we’ll outline what this means for sales, supply, and pricing as the year unfolds.

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Contact Us To Book Your Private Consultation:

📆 https://calendly.com/thevancouverlife

Dan Wurtele, PREC, REIA

604.809.0834

dan@thevancouverlife.com

Ryan Dash PREC

778.898.0089
ryan@thevancouverlife.com

www.thevancouverlife.com

Every year, we make real estate predictions knowing full well they’re as much a reflection of the moment as they are a guess about the future—and 2025 proved just how quickly the ground can move beneath your feet. In this episode, we hold ourselves accountable and revisit the bold calls we made last January: what we nailed, what we completely missed, and what actually unfolded in Canada’s economy and housing market along the way. We start with the big economic drivers that were supposed to shape the year.

We debated recession risk, population growth, unemployment, inflation, interest rates, mortgages, arrears, and government policy. Some calls landed squarely—like inflation finishing near 2.2% and the Bank of Canada settling close to where we thought. Others, like population forecasts and recession timing, were blown apart by an unexpected demographic reversal, stronger-than-anticipated labour resilience, and policy shifts few saw coming. The population story alone flipped every expectation: instead of adding hundreds of thousands, Canada actually started shrinking by Q3—something unprecedented in modern history—and that shock flowed straight into housing demand, pricing power, and sentiment.

From there, we turn to housing fundamentals, where reality humbled just about everyone. We recap how sales volumes fell instead of rising, how inventory surged far beyond expectations, how the pre-sale market nearly froze, and how price performance told a very different story than most forecast. Rental markets softened, luxury retreated, and Greater Vancouver’s “winner” markets were fewer and far more nuanced than anyone predicted.

We didn’t shy away from calling our misses what they were—some wildly optimistic, others too conservative—but each reveals something important: this market continues to behave in ways that challenge even the most experienced economists, analysts, and practitioners. Along the way, we contrast our calls with prominent bank forecasts, highlight the global and political developments that no one had on their radar a year ago, and show how quickly “consensus” can turn to fiction.

This episode isn’t about pretending foresight; it’s about learning in hindsight. It’s a candid, data-driven reflection on a year where expectations collided with reality, where economic resilience defied narrative, where policy failed to align with planning, and where Canada’s housing story took another unexpected turn. If you enjoy a mix of humility, humour, uncomfortable truth, and meaningful takeaways, this is one of those episodes that reminds everyone—industry pros included—that predicting real estate is far from easy.

_________________________________

Contact Us To Book Your Private Consultation:

📆 https://calendly.com/thevancouverlife

Dan Wurtele, PREC, REIA

604.809.0834

dan@thevancouverlife.com

Ryan Dash PREC

778.898.0089
ryan@thevancouverlife.com

www.thevancouverlife.com

As we head into 2026, population is no longer just another economic talking point — it has become one of the single most powerful forces reshaping Canadian real estate & the economy. For the first time in modern history, Canada’s population is shrinking, and the effects are immediate and profound. Ontario and British Columbia — the country’s largest and most expensive markets — are now posting negative annual population growth for the first time ever. After years of record inflows, the pendulum has swung sharply in the opposite direction.

Non-permanent residents are leaving in record numbers, permanent residents are quietly exiting the country at near-historic highs, and government targets suggest this outflow may continue for the next two years. The last time Canada experienced a demographic shock, it was driven by rapid population acceleration — and it rewrote housing dynamics overnight. Now we are watching the same type of historic shift, only in reverse, and the consequences are every bit as significant.

Those consequences are already showing up in the housing market. Canada is delivering the largest volume of purpose-built rental construction in history at the exact moment demand is softening. Rental inventory is surging, vacancy rates are climbing, incentives are returning, and the national market is clearly moving toward cheaper, more competitive rents.

That may temporarily make renting feel like the smarter financial move, but history is unequivocal: the long-term wealth gap between renters and owners remains enormous, and demographic shifts don’t change that reality.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Toronto, where the condo market has all but stalled — sales have collapsed from record highs to generational lows, new project launches have effectively halted, and completed but unsold units are stacking up at levels never recorded before. It is the clearest example of what happens when the wrong kind of supply finally outruns broad market demand in an economy built on perpetual growth assumptions. Currently, dwellings under construction is running at 500% more than the population growth rate when the historical average is 50%.

And yet, the broader economy still sends mixed signals. Mortgage growth has recently ticked up, supported largely by first-time buyers stepping in where investors and move-up purchasers have stepped back. Retail spending shows households remain cautious. Sentiment readings are improving - considerably in the business sector but insolvencies in places like B.C. are quietly hitting new records. At the same time, household net worth is sitting at all-time highs, driven by financial markets that reward those already positioned at the top. 20% of Canadians own 70% of Canadian Assets!

Affordability, meanwhile, has “improved” — but only relative to a crisis peak. Even after seven quarters of easing, ownership costs are still near the worst levels Canada has ever seen, and with rates likely holding into 2026, further progress may need to come from unpopular but necessary price declines rather than overall policy relief. In this weeks podcast, we break down this critical demographic turning point — what a shrinking population truly means for housing demand, pricing power, rental markets, developers, mortgage holders, and anyone trying to make a disciplined real estate decision in the year ahead.

_________________________________

Contact Us To Book Your Private Consultation:

📆 https://calendly.com/thevancouverlife

Dan Wurtele, PREC, REIA

604.809.0834

dan@thevancouverlife.com

Ryan Dash PREC

778.898.0089
ryan@thevancouverlife.com

www.thevancouverlife.com