The Vancouver Condo Market Isn’t at the Bottom Yet. Here’s Why That Is Good News for Buyers.

By Sonny Bhinder PREC*
September 15, 2026
10 min read

A developer in Surrey listed 30 brand new condos in one go, priced 15% to 20% below what the same units were originally asking. Within hours, 50 different buyer groups had reached out. Not within a week. Within hours.

That same firm then got a call about 18 more units from a developer in East Vancouver. This is what the Vancouver condo market looks like right now: builders who spent years putting up towers are quietly trying to get out, and the way they are doing it tells you exactly where prices really sit.

There Are 5,400 Finished Condos Sitting Empty, and They Are Not on the MLS

Here is something most people never find out. When you read real estate board data — new listings, total sales, months of inventory — none of it includes developer inventory. Developers are not required to report anything. The numbers everyone quotes are missing a whole category of supply.

That missing pile has a name: shadow inventory. Finished condos, keys ready, sitting empty, held back privately by the builder waiting for a moment that feels less bad.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation counted about 2,500 newly built condos sitting vacant and unsold across Metro Vancouver as of late 2025. Data from Rennie put the figure much higher: by December 2025, over 5,400 completed unsold units, nearly matching the all-time record set in December 1995.

“Vancouver in 2025 had as many unsold completed condos as it did in 1995.”

Rennie’s president called it the highest level of developer-owned unsold inventory in 24 years. Metro Vancouver now accounts for 28.7% of every unsold completed home in Canada, despite being a fraction of the size of Toronto. That is not a footnote. That is the whole problem.

Where It Is Worst: Surrey Central, Willoughby Heights and Brentwood

The empty units are not spread evenly. They are concentrated in three places: Brentwood in Burnaby, Willoughby Heights in Langley, and Surrey Central, which is the hardest hit of them all.

Surrey Central alone has hundreds of small investor-grade condos sitting unsold. Developers who pre-sold those units at $1,200 to $1,350 per square foot two years ago are now getting $800 to $900. You do not need a calculator to see that the maths on those buildings stopped working.

Surrey Central presale condos	Price per square foot
Pre-sold, roughly two years ago	$1,200 – $1,350
Achievable today	$800 – $900
Metro Vancouver share of Canada’s unsold completed homes	28.7%
Completed unsold units, December 2025	5,400+

How the Vancouver Condo Market Got Here

Three things caused this, and they all landed at once.

1. Money was almost free from 2020 to 2022

Developers borrowed aggressively. Investors bought aggressively. Fear of missing out did the rest. I had clients getting help from family and friends just to have a chance at getting in. New projects were launching almost monthly and everyone assumed prices only went one direction.

2. Presale pricing lost touch with reality

Developers have always priced presales at a projected future value — what they believe the unit will be worth when the building finishes years later. That worked for a long time because prices kept rising. Those future values never arrived. The market went the other way.

3. The whole presale system was built for investors, not people who live in homes

Think about what an investor wants in a condo: small, cheap to build, low entry price, decent rent, easy to flip. So Metro Vancouver ended up with shoeboxes selling at luxury prices, while resale condos — actual liveable units — never came close to those price levels. The product stopped matching the market.

Then the Bank of Canada raised rates seven times starting in 2022, and the investors who made up about 50% of new condo buyers at the peak essentially vanished. Their share of the market is now roughly 7%. When that demand left, it left fast, and it left behind a lot of empty buildings.

What Developers Are Doing to Survive

They are not sitting there hoping. Some are cancelling projects outright, refunding deposits, shutting marketing centres and putting sites up for sale. Others are pivoting hard to purpose-built rentals, because financing a rental building is easier right now than financing condo sales, and cities are actively pushing for it.

The ones holding completed inventory are getting creative: free parking, free storage, 12 to 24 month rate buydowns, cash back on completion. Incentives nobody has offered since the early 2000s.

The most telling move barely gets covered. Bulk sales. Developers who held on hoping for a recovery are cutting deals: take the 15% to 20% loss up front, sell everything to one buyer, close in 30 days, stop the bleeding. As one developer put it, he would rather take a bigger loss than be stuck dealing with it for two years. That is not strategy. That is survival.

And the clearest signal of all came from a Surrey flash sale at 25% off. Every remaining unit sold in 48 hours.

“Buyers aren’t gone. They are waiting for the right number. When the price hits that level, they show up fast.”

Why Prices Can’t Just Fall Further: The Standoff

We are in a standoff. Developers on one side, buyers on the other.

Developers cannot drop prices as far as buyers would like, because deep discounts risk breaching their loan covenants. Break those and the financing blows up, which destroys the economics of the entire project. Some builders are genuinely stuck. They have to move units without killing the deal with their lender.

Buyers are on the other side watching, and they are not wrong. Resale condos are offering better layouts, better value and a lower cost per square foot. For most first-time buyers in Surrey and Langley right now, resale is generally a better buy than a new presale.

How Condo Buyers Should Play This in Surrey and Langley

If you are a condo buyer, you have more negotiating room than at any point in the last ten years. More than I have seen in my entire career. Here is how to use it.

Go after completed inventory, not presales launching today. The real discounts sit on units that are already built, already empty, already costing the developer money every single month. Property taxes, insurance, strata fees, financing costs. Every month that unit sits, the meter runs with zero income coming in. That is your negotiating room.

Ask for things that were unthinkable in 2022. Price reductions. Closing credits. Upgrades. Lower deposits. Rate guarantees. Assignment flexibility. Some developers will say yes, because sold inventory beats unsold inventory every single time.

Be cautious with brand new presale launches. Some are offering an extra parking spot or an upgraded appliance package. That is not the same as the bargaining power you hold over a finished unit sitting vacant today. If you are weighing the wider buy-or-wait question, the buying versus renting breakdown covers the maths in a flat market.

The Part Almost Nobody Is Connecting: Construction Has Stopped

In February 2026, only 64 new presale homes launched across all of Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. A normal February would see more than 1,000. February came in at roughly 6% of normal.

In the first quarter of 2026 there were zero concrete high-rise launches in Metro Vancouver. The same quarter a year earlier had 152.

When construction stops, the pipeline for future supply stops with it. The oversupply sitting empty today is the 2020 to 2022 building boom finishing all at once into a market that does not want it. But those are the last buildings for a while. Which means in 2027, 2028 and 2029, when demand returns, there will not be much new supply to meet it.

That is exactly why experienced buyers are looking at bulk deals at 15% to 20% below asking. There is a real argument that the supply shortage of 2028 and 2029 is being created by the deals signed today. The window to buy near a bottom never stays open long.

So Where Are We, Honestly?

The condo market is not at its floor yet. Inventory is still high. Presale buyers who signed at 2022 peaks are still working through the damage, facing losses of $100,000 to $500,000 or more as units complete into a softer 2026 market.

The bulk sales, uncomfortable as they are, are a sign the market is clearing. Developers who spent two years hoping are starting to accept reality. That acceptance is usually what happens near the bottom of a cycle, not in the middle of a free fall.

If you own a condo in Surrey or Langley, are thinking about buying one, or are simply trying to work out what happens next, the thing worth doing is getting clear on where you actually stand. Not based on what your neighbour thinks, and not based on what your place was worth in 2022. For the bigger picture across every property type, the national correction breakdown puts this condo story in context, and the Surrey area guide covers where the value sits community by community.