Metro Vancouver’s housing market is hitting a new kind of crisis—not affordability, but unsold supply. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), nearly 2,500 new condos remain empty and unbought, double the number from last year.
Anne McMullin, president of the Urban Development Institute, says the math has simply stopped working: “Costs have escalated so much in the last 10 years that to build a unit is out of the price range of 80 per cent of the public in Metro Vancouver.”
Developers are unwilling to sell at a loss, but rising construction, labour, and policy-related costs have made new units unaffordable for many buyers. Some developers are even returning deposits after failing to meet pre-sale targets required for bank financing, while others have gone into receivership.
“There is a potential storm coming and it’s frightening,” McMullin warned, noting layoffs have already begun.
Industry voices like Greg Zayadi, president of Rennie, point out the scale of the slowdown: “The last time we saw this level of developer-owned unsold inventory was 24 years ago.”
The mismatch is glaring: buyers spending $800,000 expect at least 800 to 1,500 square feet, not 450-square-foot micro-units. Developers are now offering incentives—parking stalls, storage lockers, even cash-back—to lure hesitant buyers.
Royal Pacific Realty agent Oleg Galyuk says older condos often sell faster, while some new builds suffer from cramped layouts and fewer parking spaces. “Right now, a lot of condos are coming online that people don’t really want to live in,” he said.
The backlog is most visible in Burnaby, Coquitlam, and parts of Surrey, highlighting how supply doesn’t always match demand. After two decades of robust growth, Vancouver’s real estate market faces a sobering correction—one that could ripple through construction jobs and the wider economy.
