Quick answer: Greater Vancouver REALTORS lowered its 2026 sales forecast to 23,050 transactions, down from an earlier target of 24,900. Condos are absorbing most of the weakness while attached and detached homes are holding closer to flat. Inventory has started to pull back, which could support prices even without a jump in buyer demand.

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The recovery that didn't show up

At the start of the year, GVR forecast sales across Greater Vancouver would climb 4.6 percent, landing at 24,900 by year end. That forecast has now been revised down to 23,050, a 3.2 percent drop from last year.

Sales are sitting 6.2 percent below GVR's own target on a year to date basis. July came in 18.6 percent below the 10 year seasonal average for that month.

This isn't a market falling apart. It's a market that keeps trying to recover and can't build momentum. June showed signs of improvement. July pulled back again.

Why buyer demand hasn't returned

Inventory is elevated, so buyers have choice. Prices have already corrected, so affordability has improved. Borrowing costs have held steady at 2.25 percent since October of last year, according to the Bank of Canada.

On paper, conditions favour buyers more than they have in years. Sales remain weak anyway.

GVR points to a few explanations, including a slowdown in immigration, fewer investors participating, and ongoing trade uncertainty with the US. One data point from the Bank of Canada's Survey of Consumer Expectations stands out: buyers in British Columbia report more hesitancy to participate than buyers elsewhere in Canada, while sellers report more eagerness to list than sellers elsewhere in the country.

Vancouver doesn't have a shortage of homes for sale right now. It has a shortage of buyers ready to decide.

Condos are absorbing most of the weakness

GVR's 2026 sales forecast by property type:

• Apartments: down 8.6 percent

• Attached homes: up 2.2 percent

• Detached: up 1.1 percent

Two property types are close to flat. One is doing almost all the pulling back.

I have a client right now who owns a half duplex and a condo, both in Vancouver East. The duplex will sell for less than they'd hoped, but they purchased back in 2012, so there's real appreciation built in. They'll come out ahead there. The condo tells a different story. They'll still come out ahead, but the subarea data shows softer performance in that segment than in the duplex's right now. Same owner, same part of the city, two segments reacting differently.

When someone tells you the Vancouver market is down, the real question is which Vancouver market. A Downtown one bedroom and an East Van detached home are not behaving the same way this year.

The number worth watching closer than the sales figure

New listings have started to decline. Active inventory is coming down from recent highs, and GVR expects that trend to continue.

A market doesn't need more buyers to tighten. It can also tighten with fewer sellers.

Picture a hundred listings and ten buyers. Now picture seventy five listings and the same ten buyers. Demand hasn't moved. The balance has.

Prices could hold without the market recovering

GVR's price forecast for year end:

• Apartments: $750,000, down 0.7 percent

• Attached: $1,215,000, down 1.2 percent

• Detached: $2,030,000, down 1.4 percent

• Market total: $1,230,000, up 0.2 percent

Every individual category is forecast to decline. The overall market average is forecast to rise. That's a mix effect. If detached homes make up a larger share of sales relative to condos this year, the average shifts up even while every segment on its own is softening.

The category you're buying or selling in tells you more than the market total ever will.

What this means if you're selling

Buyers have options right now and aren't feeling urgency. Overpricing gets punished fast, especially in the condo segment where inventory is heaviest.

The comparable sale from three weeks ago carries more weight than what your neighbour listed for and hasn't sold. Testing a price five percent above the evidence tends to produce the same result: days on market climb, interest moves to the next listing, and a price reduction follows from a weaker position than the first number would have held.

What this means if you're buying

Selection, time, and room to negotiate all favour buyers right now.

If inventory really has started to peak, the strongest negotiating window may come before the market's recovery is obvious to everyone else. Leverage tends to be strongest right before it gets noticed, and weakest right after.

What actually changed

Demand is weak, and condos are absorbing most of it. At the same time, new listings are starting to pull back.

The next phase of this market may not come from a flood of buyers returning. It could come from fewer properties available to compete over. That shift in inventory is the number worth watching closer than the sales forecast.

FAQ

Is the Vancouver real estate market down in 2026? Sales are behind GVR's original forecast for the year, and the association has revised its 2026 target down to 23,050 transactions. Performance varies significantly by property type and neighbourhood.

Why are condo sales weaker than detached and attached homes? GVR's 2026 forecast shows apartments down 8.6 percent while attached and detached homes are close to flat. Reduced investor participation, affordability sensitivity among entry-level buyers, and heavier condo inventory are likely contributing factors.

Will Vancouver home prices go up or down in 2026? GVR forecasts a slight decline in every individual property category, apartments, attached, and detached, but a slight increase in the overall market average. That's a mix effect caused by the proportion of higher priced sales shifting, not a rise in individual property values.

Is now a good time to buy in Vancouver? Buyers currently have more selection and negotiating room than they've had in a few years. Inventory has started to decline, which could reduce that leverage before broader market conditions shift.

Is now a good time to sell in Vancouver? Pricing accurately matters more than usual right now. Buyers have options and are comparing listings closely, so overpriced homes tend to sit and require reductions.

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Quick answer: Not every part of the market has softened equally. Westside detached prices have pulled back roughly 13% from their 2024 peak and are close to where they stood in 2020, while Downtown condo prices, what most upsizers are actually selling, are down only about 5% from their 2022 peak. That gap between the two is smaller than it's been in years, which is worth knowing before you decide whether to wait or move.

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Is now a good time to upsize?

That's the question I keep getting asked, and my answer usually starts the same way. It depends on what you're actually upsizing into.

Right now, there isn't one Vancouver market. Condos, detached homes, and duplexes are telling three different stories. If you're reading the headlines and trying to make a decision off the aggregate number, you're reading the wrong number.

A few months back, I put out a video called Don't Buy a Duplex in Vancouver Until You Watch This. Not long after, someone reached out. They'd just had an offer accepted on a Westside duplex, and after watching the video, they had more questions than answers. They already had their own realtor on the deal, they just wanted a second opinion before removing subjects.

I won't tell you who this is, and I won't point at an address. But the numbers behind their situation are real, they're public record, and they say something worth understanding if you're weighing the same decision.

What the board data actually shows

Greater Vancouver Realtors put the benchmark price for a Vancouver Westside detached home at just over $3 million in July, down 7.5% from a year earlier. Active listings are down close to 14% year over year, and sales are actually up 8% over the same period, fewer homes coming to market, slightly more of them selling.

The sales to active ratio sits at roughly 9%. SnapStats classifies anything under 12% as buyer's market territory, so this segment is sitting comfortably inside that range.

It's not one flat story even within Westside detached. SnapStats has Kitsilano at a 37% sales ratio right now, a seller's market by any definition. Shaughnessy, same city, same segment, is sitting at 3%.

Looking at the SnapStats annual numbers for Westside detached going back to 2020: the median sale price that year was just over $3,043,000. It climbed from there, peaking in 2024 at $3,521,000. Year to date this year, it's sitting at $3,073,000, roughly 13% off the 2024 peak, and almost exactly where it stood six years ago. Not a small dip. A round trip.

The other side of the equation

Most people upsizing out of a condo aren't selling into this same softness. According to SnapStats, the median price for a Downtown Vancouver condo or townhome peaked in 2022 at just under $807,000. Year to date this year, it's sitting at $766,400, down about 5% off the peak.

Compare that to Westside detached, down roughly 13% off its own peak. Two completely different speeds. When the thing you're selling barely moves while the thing you're buying drops hard, the gap between them changes. That's what I call the spread, and right now, in this specific segment, it's compressed in a way we haven't seen in years.

A real example

The duplex the person above was buying into sat on a lot that used to be one property. A developer bought the lot, tore down what was there, and under the city's current zoning built two units side by side, each sold separately but tied to the same land, the same original cost, and often the same construction timeline.

Both units came to market within weeks of each other last spring, both listed at just over $2.5 million. The first unit sold this spring, after several listing attempts and close to a year on the market, closing at just under $1.9 million, roughly $700,000 off where it started.

The second unit is the one this buyer had the accepted offer on. That sale hasn't closed yet. It's accepted at just under $1.8 million, even lower than what its twin next door had already sold for. Same development, same builder, same product, and the second time around it took even longer and landed even lower. That's real price discovery, playing out twice in a row on the same block.

To be clear: this doesn't mean every Westside duplex is losing money, or that the whole market has gone soft. One deal is one deal. But it happened inside a broader pattern, and that pattern is backed by real board numbers, not a feeling.

Where this leaves you

Every move-up decision comes down to a gap, the gap between what your current place is worth and what the next one costs you. That gap isn't fixed. It moves.

Say your condo is worth roughly what it was two years ago, give or take a normal single-digit move. Say the detached or duplex product you want has pulled back double digits, in some cases closer to 30% off its peak. The gap between you just got smaller, not because your condo lost value, but because the other side came down to meet you.

None of this erases the size of the decision. Selling a place you've lived in for years, and betting on a bigger commitment, isn't small. But knowing where the numbers actually sit beats making that decision blind.

I don't predict bottoms, nobody credible does. But there's a pattern worth knowing: historically in Vancouver, the detached market has tended to correct before the rest of the market catches up, usually because it's the highest priced, most rate-sensitive corner of the market. Will it happen exactly that way again? I don't know. History doesn't repeat itself so much as it rhymes, and right now, this rhyme is hard to ignore.

This isn't about timing the bottom. It's about reading your position inside it.

If you've been sitting on the fence for a year or two, waiting for some signal that never quite arrives, this is worth treating as that signal. Not a guarantee. A reason to actually run your numbers instead of continuing to wait.

If you're considering a duplex purchase specifically, I put together a checklist covering exactly what to check before you remove subjects, from the neighbour conversation nobody wants to have to who's responsible for the roof if only one side leaks.

Download the Duplex Buyer's Checklist 
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Quick answer

A low strata fee in an older building is rarely a sign of good management. It is more often a sign that repairs and replacements are being delayed instead of funded. The cost does not disappear. It shows up later as a special levy, and it lands on whoever owns the unit at the time.

Everyone tells you low strata fees are a good sign. Buyers see a number lower than the building next door and read it as savings.

In an older building, that number usually means something else.

A low fee does not mean the building costs less to run. It means someone decided not to pay for something yet. Roofs, piping, elevators, parkades, and building envelope work still need funding whether the strata is saving for them or not. If the fee looks low compared to what those items actually cost, the difference has not disappeared. It has been deferred to the next owner.

I break down the full review process, including the documents themselves, in this video. If you'd rather watch than read, hit play below

What I found inside one Metro Vancouver building

I recently reviewed a building for a client where the fees had stayed flat for years. On paper it looked efficient. Inside the documents, a different story was buried in the numbers.

The council had paid themselves out of the contingency reserve fund without an owner vote. Once that surfaced, two of three council members resigned. One person was left running the building. Basic maintenance stopped. Broken mailboxes went unrepaired for months, and the management firm handling the books was reconsidering the contract.

About half the owners do not live in the building full time. The rest cycle through as investment tenants. Nobody in that mix had a reason to push for higher fees. The people who might have cared were not there to raise it.

This is not a rare pattern. It is the pattern that shows up whenever fees sit lower than they should for a building's age.

Reading the depreciation report and the Form K count

Two documents tell you more than the fee ever will.

The first is the depreciation report. This is where a strata is required to project upcoming repairs, their cost, and how the building plans to fund them. The number to watch for is not the total. It is the pattern of major items pushed to "next report" across multiple cycles. A roof that has been three years away for the last three reports is not three years away. It is being avoided.

The second is the Form K count. A Form K is filed when an owner rents out their unit. A building with a high number of them is a building with a heavy concentration of investor owners, and investor owners are often motivated to keep fees frozen to protect their cash flow, regardless of what the building actually needs. A high Form K count does not mean a building is poorly run. It means you should look harder at who is voting on the budget and why.

BC's reserve fund rules, and why the legal minimum isn't enough

Since late 2023, BC law has required stratas to contribute at least 10 percent of their operating budget to the contingency reserve fund each year, and to maintain a minimum reserve equal to 25 percent of that budget.

That sounds like protection. It is a floor, not a target.

The 25 percent figure is calculated against the operating budget, which covers day to day costs like insurance, cleaning, and utilities. It has nothing to do with what a roof, an elevator, or a parkade membrane actually costs to replace. A building can meet the legal minimum and still be nowhere close to funded for the work its depreciation report says is coming.

The deferral loophole that closed in 2024

Until July 1, 2024, a strata could vote at its AGM to defer its depreciation report for up to 18 months at a time. Some buildings used that provision repeatedly and pushed a real report off for close to a decade.

That loophole is closed now. A catch up deadline landed in July 2026 across Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and the Capital Regional District, and buildings that deferred for years are now producing real numbers for the first time. Industry estimates put the true annual cost of condo repairs and levies at over $2,000 per unit for an average BC condo, and closer to $3,000 for older buildings. For a lot of owners, this is the first time that number has been in writing.

Insurance: the piece most buyers never check

Over 60 percent of BC stratas now carry water deductibles above $50,000. In older buildings, or buildings with a claims history, that number climbs to $250,000 or $500,000.

A single water event in a building like that is not a minor claim. It is a bill the strata absorbs directly, and that bill gets covered one of two ways: a fee increase or a special levy. Buildings with deferred maintenance and thin records often struggle to secure reasonable insurance at all, which pushes the cost onto owners either way.

This is not a line item most buyers think to ask about. It should be.

Why this shows up on resale, not on purchase

None of this is visible from the unit. New paint and a renovated kitchen tell you what the home looks like today. They tell you nothing about what ownership costs next.

The building I described above is not only a buyer's problem. If you already own there, the same governance gap and the same underfunded reserve are sitting on your equity right now. A special assessment affects roughly 1 in 6 Canadian condo buildings over any given five year stretch. When it lands, buyers do not just see a bill. They see a governance problem, and that narrows your buyer pool fast.

The checklist I run before recommending a purchase

Before I recommend a client move forward on a strata purchase, I check:

• The contingency reserve fund balance against the 25 percent legal minimum, and against what the depreciation report says the building actually needs

• Whether the building is self-managed, and how active the current council is

• The Form K count, as a signal for investor concentration

• Whether the depreciation report was authored by a licensed professional and dated after July 2025

• All three required funding models in the report, not just the executive summary

• The most recent insurance renewal and the current deductible

A renovated unit tells you how the home looks today. The documents tell you what ownership might actually cost next.

Final thought

A low fee is not a discount. It is a delay. The question is not whether the cost is coming. It is who happens to own the unit when it arrives.

If you are looking at a building right now and want a second set of eyes on the strata documents before you write an offer, I review the full package, free, before you commit to anything.

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Frequently asked questions

Are low strata fees always a bad sign? Not always. In a newer building with a well-funded reserve, a lower fee can genuinely reflect efficient management. In an older building, a fee that has stayed flat for years while major building components age is far more often a sign of deferred maintenance than savings.

What is a depreciation report? A depreciation report is a document that projects a building's major repairs and replacements over a set time horizon, along with their estimated cost and how the strata plans to fund them. It is the clearest picture available of what a building actually needs financially, separate from what the current fee suggests.

What does a high Form K count mean? A Form K is filed whenever an owner rents out their unit. A high count signals a building with a large share of investor owners, who are often motivated to keep fees low to protect their rental cash flow. It is worth checking, not because investor ownership is automatically bad, but because it changes who is voting on the budget and why.

What is the legal minimum for a strata's contingency reserve fund in BC? Since late 2023, BC law requires stratas to contribute at least 10 percent of the operating budget annually to the contingency reserve fund and maintain a minimum reserve of 25 percent of that budget. This is a legal floor, not a guarantee that the building is funded for its actual major repairs.

Why did depreciation reports change in 2024 and 2026? Until July 1, 2024, stratas could vote to defer their depreciation report every 18 months, and some deferred for close to a decade. That loophole closed in 2024. A catch up deadline landed in July 2026 for Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and the Capital Regional District, forcing many buildings to produce a real report for the first time in years.

Sources: BC Strata Property Act, Greater Vancouver REALTORS®