While developers develop, buyers are seemingly not buying. A recent rennie report notes that Metro Vancouver is home to over 2,000 empty condos with no one wanting to purchase them.
rennie, a website dedicated to marketing real estate, focuses on Metro Vancouver in the latest edition of their landscape report.
MANY HOMES
In recent times, housing in Metro Vancouver has experienced a “renewed interest.” rennie describes it as “robust”, as “purpose-built construction” has soared past 10,000 homes in just the last two years. Additionally, 2023 had 33,000 total housing starts, and 28,000 in 2024.
And yet, 2,000 of those brand-new condos are completely empty. Uninhabited, and not sold. By the end of 2025, this number is expected to jump to 3,500.
So, in spite of these plentiful houses, buyers just don’t seem to be biting.
BUT NO BUYERS
Pre-sales are down, rennie notes. With fewer than 10,000 sales, the numbers suggest “that ownership starts are likely to drop further in 2025.” But, continued housing projects will apparently prevent that total from dropping more than it already has.
During Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign, doubling housing starts was on the list of his promises. In order to lower prices, the rate of home building had to increase. Essentially, supply needed to outweigh the demand.
Vancouverites may have noticed a familiar name in Carney’s new cabinet: Vancouver’s former mayor Gregor Robertson has just recently been sworn in as the housing minister. Robertson reportedly plans on focusing on affordable housing, intending to increase the supply in order to stabilize the market.
Condo listings are currently as high as they have ever been in years. It is unknown whether Metro Vancouver’s housing crisis will be solved anytime soon. For now, all we know is that we’ve got a lot of empty condos sitting around, and that there will be even more.
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