How Far Condo Prices Actually Fell in South Surrey and White Rock

How far have condo prices actually fallen in South Surrey and White Rock?

Condo prices in South Surrey and White Rock are down about 4.6% from a year ago. That is a much smaller drop than the rest of Surrey, where prices have fallen closer to 10%, and North Surrey, where they are down almost 12%. The benchmark apartment across the Fraser Valley now sits at $476,000, down 9% year over year. The number you read in a national headline is an average of dozens of very different markets, and none of us actually owns the average.

A major bank forecast made the rounds recently, and it made a lot of people around here nervous.

TD Bank economists are calling for Vancouver condo prices to fall another 7% to 8% by the end of this year. Stack that on what has already happened and you get a correction of roughly 15% since 2023. Their language was blunt. They said there is nothing putting upward pressure on prices right now.

I am not going to tell you that report is wrong, because on the numbers it mostly is not.

What I will tell you is that it describes a region, and you are not buying a region. You are buying one unit, in one building, in one pocket of one city. And when you pull the local data apart, the story gets a lot more useful.

Quick Stat: The benchmark apartment in the Fraser Valley is $476,000, down 9% from a year ago. That annual drop is actually steeper than Metro Vancouver’s.

Why the regional average hides what your building is doing

I pulled the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board numbers from June. Not a forecast. Actual sales.

Here is the honest part first. Yes, condo prices are down here too. We are firmly in a buyer’s market. The sales to active listings ratio is sitting around 11%, and anything under 12% is buyer’s market territory. The average condo is taking 38 days to sell.

So far that all matches the headline.

Now watch what happens when you stop looking at the average and start looking at actual neighbourhoods. These figures all come from the same report, the same month, the same city.

• North Surrey condos: down almost 12% in one year, with a benchmark around $409,000
• Surrey overall: down about 10%
• Cloverdale: down about 9.5%
• South Surrey and White Rock: down 4.6%

You can drive from one end of Surrey to the other in twenty minutes. Over that distance, the condo market has fallen nearly three times harder at one end than the other.

Same city. Same headlines. Completely different outcome for your money.

This is why I keep saying there is no such thing as a BC condo. There is a condo in a specific sub area, in a specific building type, at a specific price point. Some of those are still sliding. Some have quietly stopped. If you are making a half million dollar decision off a national average, you are using the wrong map. Watch this part at 3:48.

If you want a fuller picture of where every property type sits right now, I broke down how much homes cost in this area earlier in the year. And if the gap between condos and townhomes is what you are weighing, that comparison between a condo or a townhome is worth your time.

Reality Check: A one bedroom in North Surrey that is down 12% with heavy inventory around it is a completely different decision than a two bedroom in White Rock that has barely moved 5%. One of those may still have room to fall. The other is telling you it has found a floor.

The part of this story almost nobody is talking about

Most coverage blames interest rates. Rates are part of it, but they are not the interesting part.

The thing I see every week, and no bank report will ever show you, is that first time buyers have largely vanished from this market.

People treat that as one slice of the market going quiet. It is not. First time buyers are the ignition switch for everything above them.

Think about how a market actually moves. A first time buyer purchases a condo. That condo seller uses the money to buy a townhouse. That townhouse seller moves up to a detached home. That seller downsizes, or moves away, or buys the next thing. One buyer at the bottom can set off a chain of three, four, or five transactions.

Take that buyer away and what is left is a lot of people who want to move, trying to trade properties among themselves, with nobody starting the chain.

That is not a crash. That is a stall. And that is exactly what this market feels like right now. Watch this part at 6:14.

Here is where it gets genuinely interesting, because the market has already started reacting.

I pulled BC Housing’s new homes registry data. New for sale multi unit registrations, which is the condo pipeline, dropped almost 38% across BC in the first three months of this year. Compared to the 2021 peak, it is down roughly 40%. In March, out of more than 300 new multi unit buildings registered in the entire province, exactly one was a building over 100 units.

Developers have not stopped building. They have stopped building condos for sale. Rental construction is up almost 25% this year, because that is where the money went when the pre sale buyers left. I wrote about a related version of this squeeze when I looked at condo developers taking losses on completed projects, and again when the province started buying up empty condos.

Now play that forward. The condos you would be shopping for in 2029 and 2030 are supposed to be starting construction right now. They are not.

So we have an odd moment. There is a mountain of inventory today and sellers competing hard for your attention, while future supply is being quietly switched off in the background. Watch this part at 7:22.

Did You Know?: Out of more than 300 new multi unit buildings registered across BC in March, only one was larger than 100 units.

Should you buy a condo now or keep waiting?

My honest answer is that it depends entirely on which market you are actually shopping in, not the one in the headline.

Start with who this moment genuinely favours.

If you are a first time buyer, the exact person who left this market, stop and picture the conditions you would design if you could. More selection than buyers have had in memory. Sellers who are actually negotiating. Thirty eight days on market instead of bidding wars measured in hours. Prices that have already come down.

That is not a fantasy. That is this market, today. The discount exists because people like you stepped back, which means the ones who step forward first get the best of it. If that is you, the piece on finding the best value neighbourhoods is a good next read.

If you are moving up, selling a condo to buy a townhouse or a house, stop thinking about your sale and your purchase as two separate events.

Yes, you will take less for your condo than you would have in 2022. But the townhouse you are buying is down over 7% in a year, and detached homes are down almost 8%. When both sides of the trade have dropped, the only thing that matters is the gap between them. Right now that gap is smaller than it has been in years.

Selling low and buying low can work strongly in your favour, and almost nobody sits down and runs the actual math on it.

None of that means buy anything, anywhere. Buying the falling one too early, or overpaying for the stable one because a headline said everything was on sale, can cost you tens of thousands either way. When you do find the right one, knowing how to negotiate your purchase price in a market with rising inventory matters more than it did two years ago.

Pro Tip: Before you make an offer, ask for sold data on the specific building and floor plan you are considering, not the city. Two buildings on the same street can be on completely different trajectories.

If you want to sanity check any of this against the raw provincial numbers yourself, BCREA publishes monthly statistical releases, and I went deeper on where I think the next twelve months are heading in my market forecast for this year. For a look at how policy changes are still rippling through the resale side, the story of tenanted condos in the Fraser Valley is a good example.

Here is what I would actually do next. If you are thinking about buying in the next year, do not make that call off a bank headline, and honestly, do not make it off this article either. Make it off current data for the specific area you want to buy in.

That is the part I am happy to help with. Send me the sub areas and the price range you are looking at, and I will walk you through what is selling, what is sitting, where prices are still sliding, and where they have already found a floor. No pressure and no sales pitch, just the map you need before you spend this kind of money. You can reach me directly through White Rock and South Surrey pages on this site, or by phone or email any time.