The 5 Key Factors Impacting The 2026 Metro Vancouver Presale Market

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: 2025 was a very rough year for the presale market. According to MLA Canada, 2025 saw just 60 project launches, less than 4,800 units released, and an absorption rate of about 30%, making it one of the most constrained presale years in over a decade. 

Those numbers don’t even tell the full story. A vast majority of the launches and units released were low-rise woodframe buildings or townhouses, not high-rises, and what little activity that occurred was concentrated in suburban markets rather than Vancouver. The market has been on a downward trajectory since before 2025, but we really hit the bottom in 2025.

What are the factors that will determine how things go in 2026? Are there any reasons to be optimistic? To answer these questions, The Realist spoke to Anthem Properties Founder & CEO Eric Carlson, Polygon Homes President & CEO Neil Chrystal, and Ace Project Marketing Group VP of Marketing & Strategy Deren Akinci[1].

Consumer Sentiment

Interest rates have come down. Prices have come down. There are more options than ever. Developers are offering incentives left and right. So why were buyers still on the sidelines? It comes down to consumer sentiment. 

“They don’t know what to do,” said Carlson. “They’re confused about the economy. They’re confused about what’s going on in the housing market. Nobody wants to pay $1,200 per sq. ft when it’s going to be finished and be worth $1,000. They just don’t know because there’s so much confusing information out there. There’s so much uncertainty in the market right now.” 

2025 also saw US President Donald Trump launch a trade war, Canada go through a federal election, and fee simple ownership in British Columbia called into question as a result of the Cowichans Tribes ruling. Those things may not have a direct impact on the housing market, but they can add up in a way that leads people to conclude that this is not a good time to make one of the biggest buying decisions of their lives.

“Uncertainty manifested in a way that still showed us we had good lead engagement,” said Akinci. “It’s not like we had a drop in registrations. Our visits to presentation centres — there was a minimal drop there, like 5% to 10%, maybe 20% on some projects. Where we saw the drop-off was we’d be having these conversations with buyers and they’d be qualified for the price, they liked the location, they liked all the amenities, they wanted to move in a year or two. Yeses across the board when we’re going through our qualification process. Then we’re like ‘Great. Do you want to write a deal?’ and they say ‘Oh I’m gonna need another week.’ ‘I’m gonna need two weeks.’ And then ghosted. That conversion from having an engaged lead to actually writing a contract — that’s where we saw a huge amount of disengagement.” 

The silver lining is there are still people who want to buy. And there is some reason to believe that 2026 will be a better time to buy than 2025. 

“One of the big advantages this year and one of the reasons I’m a little bit more optimistic than some of our competitors is the GST rebate — $50,000 for first-time buyers,” said Chrystal[2]. “That is an excellent incentive. Mortgages, whether you’re a first-time buyer or move-up buyer, you’re not getting the lowest rate ever offered, but a rate under 4.00% is historically a good rate. If you’re trying to drive your payments a little lower, you can go with 30-year amortization. Those are good options. There’s so many little tools that are available right now.”

The Investor-Purchaser

Like it or not, investor-purchasers were a significant part of the presale market and their absence was a big reason why presales struggled so much. Why did investors disappear ? Investors are a bit more sophisticated than the typical consumer, so it’s more about the fundamentals than just consumer sentiment.

“They have to be able to buy a home that generates the returns that they’re looking for as an investor and I think right now that’s a hard one to juggle, because rents are definitely falling right now,” said Chrystal. “Investors were buying a lot of suites in the urban centres to do nightly rentals in years past. With that gone and with rates spiked up, there’s a whole bunch of reasons why investors exited the market. The biggest one today is that a lot of investors are underwater on their investments, so they’re taking a break.”

“Investors have choice,” added Carlson. “They can invest in condos, they can invest in commercial real estate, they can invest in the stock market. The stock market has been very good in the last year, so it’s been easier to put money into a mutual fund or leave it in a bank while there’s uncertainty bubbling around.” 

On the ground, Akinci said he felt like the reduction in interest rates throughout 2025 didn’t really move the needle. He says investors are looking for more certainty and he’s optimistic heading into 2026, believing the Bank of Canada’s rate hold in December to be a signal that we’ve reached the bottom and that things are stabilizing. He also noted that with investors gone, much of the presale activity will continue to be driven by end users looking to live in the homes themselves. 

The Developers

Despite the down market, developers still have to keep chugging along and many are adjusting to the new reality in ways that benefit prospective buyers. 

“Speaking on behalf of Polygon, in order for us to be successful selling homes, we had to price them differently, meaning our prices had to be more competitive and they had to be more in the affordability range,” said Chrystal. “We did that and we actually had some successful sales programs.[3] […] We’re offering some pretty aggressive incentives to sell finished homes and you’ve got a lot of selection. I kind of think this could be the year that we look back on and say ‘Boy, that was a great time to buy.’ But we won’t know until the end.”

Carlson, who bounced back and forth between pessimism and optimism during our conversation, said he thinks we’re “moving towards calmness” and “sustained mediocrity,” which he believes is far better than boom and bust. “Sustained mediocrity is great because then you can plan for it and build around it,” he said. 

As somebody who works with developers to come up with marketing strategies, Akinci says there’s a few dos and don’ts in 2026.

“They need to be very clear about what their offering is,” he said. “Where I think the buyer has really changed is they’re not going to be pushed into these fake-urgent scenarios. They’re starting to be able to see through the market a little more now, so when you’re trying to create fake urgency, it’s not really working anymore. The things that are going to work going forward in 2026 are transparency, flexibility. Buyers really need to be able to see the upside of what they’re buying.”

Population Numbers

Immigration is critical for a simple reason: if 400,000 people are coming into the country, that’s 400,000 people that will need housing, 400,000 people that will need cellphone service, and 400,000 that will be consumers. Canada has had its doors wide open, with annual immigration targets increasing steadily over the past decade from about 300,000 to 500,000, but it’s now shifting gears, with targets set at 385,000 for 2026and 370,000 for 2027 and 2028. Telecom companies have blamed the shift for slowing growth and homebuilders are monitoring it as well.

“That movement in late-2022 and 2023 really confused the residential market,” said Carlson. “When those people come in, they don’t necessarily go buy houses cause they’re not permanent residences, but it puts pressure on the rental market. And when vacancy goes to zero, rents go up, and people invest in condos because they want to buy them to rent them out.”

With immigration numbers now heading in the other direction, the inverse is happening: vacancy has gone up, rents have come down, and buying a presale to rent out later isn’t a surefire bet. 

“You see 7,000 finished unsold condos and you go ‘Wow, that’s a lot of unsold condos,’ but it depends on how you look at it,” said Carlson, using an arbitrary number. “If people are leaving, that’s a lot of condos. If people are arriving or we’re getting any kind of population growth, then that can get absorbed very quickly.”

In addition to the people coming in, there is also a significant amount of temporary residents already in Canada with visas set to expire and questions have arisen about whether they will actually leave the country. All of this makes it hard to comprehend exactly how the population numbers will change and when those changes will occur. Businesses hate uncertainty.

Competing Inventory

When a developer undertakes a condo project, more often than not they have to pre-sell anywhere from 60% to 80% of the units to secure construction financing. Traditionally, developers will then hold the remaining units to sell after construction completes, with the expectation that prices will rise during the construction period. 

Few projects launched in 2025, but many that launched in prior years are now complete or heading towards completion and those unsold units are harder to sell in today’s market. How long it takes those units to be absorbed will factor into when we start to see new project launches. This can be challenging for developers, but it’s good for prospective buyers. 

“It’s going to give buyers a lot more options,” explained Akinci. “In the short and medium-term, over the next two to three years, developers are going to have to compete a lot more so that inventory starts to get eaten up. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The buyers in BC have had a tough time for such a long time. It’s been such a sellers market for so long. To see it swing or normalize a bit more is probably going to be very welcome for all the buyers.”

There is also a stream of purpose-built rental supply coming steadily the next few years and this has an effect on the presale market, too, as vacancy will likely continue to rise, rents will be unlikely to increase, and buying a presale to rent out later will continue to seem like an uncertain bet to investors. 

“When things were stable, you pre-buy a unit in 2016 for $1,000 [per sq. ft], it’s delivered in 2019, and it might be worth $1,075,” explained Carlson. “You have a bit of value appreciation and then you can rent it out cause rents were going up as well. It was a decent investment for an investor. But if you think you’re gonna buy at $1,200 and upon delivery in three years it might be worth $1,200 or $1,175 or $1,050, it’s not as valuable. And if you’re reading that vacancy rates are going up and rents are flattening out, you’d be less inclined to invest.”

2026

So, as we head deeper into 2026, the silver linings for the Vancouver presale market are these: interest rates are relatively stable now, prices are being lowered, developers are offering incentives, the GST rebate for first-time buyers will likely be enacted, and there is an abundance of options for buyers. 

“The presale market will be very soft in 2026, it will be less soft in 2027, and 2028 is going to be the exact opposite,” concluded Carlson. “There will be some corrections and distressed sales here and there in 2026 that will mitigate by the end of the year and 2027 and by 2028 prices will go up again. That’s what I see and that’s what we’re basing our strategy on.” 

Ever the realist, Carlson takes a bit of comfort in knowing that things really can’t get much worse. 

“It can only improve from where it’s at,” he said. “I think we’ve made it as bad as we can make it. When you’re lying on the floor, there’s only one way to go: up. It’ll still feel like shit for a year, but it’s much more clear to me where we’re going and what’s happening. I still think we can make it work. We’ve created a lot of hardships for ourselves that were unnecessary, but we’ll fix it.”

1. All three interviews took place before January 16.
2. Chrystal also accurately pointed out that the piece of legislation that includes the first-time home buyers’ GST rebate, Bill C-4, has not received royal assent yet. It reached third reading in December 2025, however, and is expected to receive royal assent in early-2026.
3. Chrystal said they sold 75 units of their 101-unit Ridgewood townhouse project in Coquitlam, as one example.