The Vancouver Life Real Estate Podcast OCTOBER 2025 Vancouver Real Estate Market Update - Prices, Jobs & Pre Sales Falling
Canada’s housing market is shifting faster than the headlines suggest—and not in one direction. On paper, “affordability” is improving as prices slip and the overnight rate eases to 2.5%, taking ownership costs back toward late-2021 levels. But the market isn’t responding like 2021 because confidence has fractured. Job openings fell 4.2% month-over-month, construction vacancies plunged 14.3% in a single month, and there are now more Canadians on EI (~550k) than there are job postings (~460k). That backdrop makes a million-dollar decision a hard sell. Meanwhile, the presale engine that funds future supply is sputtering: the GTA’s August logged just 300 new-home sales—down 42% year-over-year and 81% below the 10-year norm—with Vancouver operating at roughly a third of typical activity. Builders are finishing what’s already in the ground, but not launching new projects, setting up a delayed-impact shortage later this decade even as today’s prices grind lower.
Policy is tightening, too. OSFI’s 2026 capital rules will stop investors from “re-using” the same rental income to qualify for multiple mortgages and will push more loans into income-producing buckets that carry higher capital charges. Combined-loan products will be treated as defaulted across the bundle if one piece fails. Translation: leverage gets harder for small investors just as institutions—REITs, pensions, private equity—face fewer practical constraints and can buy at scale. The likely result is a further professionalization of the rental market and a harder path to wealth-building via real estate for the middle class. At the same time, the long-standing premium of new-build over resale is wobbling. In the U.S., resale has flipped to price above new for the first time in decades—a signal of builder discounting, smaller product mixes, and the powerful “rate-lock” effect that traps owners in ultra-low mortgages and starves resale supply. Canada is different (shorter mortgage terms), but presale discounts and “more reasonable” launch pricing are appearing here, too.
Macro currents aren’t providing much lift. Housing starts fell 16.3% month-over-month to a 246k pace, with rentals (≈102k) almost matching all single-family plus condo starts—unsustainable without firmer demand and cheaper capital. BC’s single-family permits have collapsed to ~45-year lows, underscoring just how thin end-user appetite is at current price points. Households remain stretched: the debt-service ratio ticked up to 14.4%, near 15-year highs for interest costs, and yet arrears improved modestly and net worth rose with equity markets—an uneasy equilibrium that doesn’t restore confidence. On the ground, October stats still read “slow grind”: sales in Greater Vancouver hovered ~20% below the 10-year average, months of supply kept the market balanced, days-on-market rose for a sixth straight month, and the HPI slipped again—down ~4% from March’s high and back to early-2023 levels. Add it up and you get a market in reset: prices easing, presales anaemic, credit tighter for small landlords, and starts rolling over. In this episode, we unpack what that means for buyers eyeing value, sellers recalibrating expectations, and policymakers deciding whether to intervene—or let the reset run its course.
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