Should I sell my South Surrey or White Rock home now, or wait for the market to recover?

Nobody can tell you where the market goes next, so the question is not really about timing. If you are selling one home to buy another, the number that decides your outcome is the gap between what you sell for and what you buy for, not the sale price on its own. Detached benchmark prices in this area have come down roughly $147,000 since the start of 2025, and townhomes about $80,000. That means a move up buyer who feels like they lost $80,000 is usually buying their next home for $147,000 less than they would have paid.

This is the question I get more than any other right now, and I understand why people get stuck on it. You could sell today and stop losing equity. Or you could hold, time the bottom perfectly, and ride the next run back up. I have been selling here since 2007 and I cannot predict the future, and anybody who tells you they can is having you on. What I can do is show you the three mistakes I watch people make while they try to answer it, because those mistakes have cost real money.

Let me set the table first. Back in January, a City News article quoted the chief economist at the British Columbia Real Estate Association saying sales would be up and closer to a ten year average by the end of this year. The same month, a BCREA forecast noted that its model simulations show significant upside risk to prices, with home prices potentially rising up to 27% adjusted for inflation by 2032 as construction shortfalls collide with recovering demand later in the decade. Read that as a scenario, not a promise. Forecasts move, and a number set in 2032 says almost nothing about what your home is worth next spring.

Most people do not get stuck on the data anyway. They get stuck on the feeling. There is a well studied effect called the endowment effect, where we value something more once we own it. In the classic version of the study, people asked to buy a coffee mug priced it at around a dollar fifty. When those same people were given a mug and asked what they would sell it for, the price jumped. Now apply that to a house you raised your kids in. We stop thinking with our heads.

Three mistakes that keep sellers stuck

The first is expecting the market to owe you something.

For about thirty years in this community, that expectation was almost gospel. Prices went up. When they dipped, the dip was short and the recovery was guaranteed. Historically that has largely been true and we have been fortunate for it. It may well happen again. The question is whether it happens on your timeline.

So be specific with yourself. How much would your home have to go up before waiting actually pays off? Is it 10%? Is it 15%? Can you say with confidence that two years from now this market will be 15% higher than it is today? Most people cannot, and would not put money on it. Meanwhile your life is on hold. Maybe the family has outgrown the house. Maybe the stairs are no longer working for you. Maybe you want to be closer to work instead of losing hours to traffic. Those are good reasons to move, and none of them care what the market does. Watch this part at 6:15 where I go through it.

Reality Check: Buyers today have access to every active listing, every recent sale, and every price change. They will not pay more because your home is special to you.

The second mistake is attaching to the high watermark.

This is the belief that the peak price, usually fall 2022, is where the market is heading back to. It is a cousin of the idea that your home is worth your property assessment, which is a number built for taxation and not for pricing a sale.

Remember what the peak actually was. Emergency level interest rates, meant to keep the economy moving. Buyers convinced real estate could not lose. Demand that was genuinely wild. That set of conditions is not here anymore, and pricing today against that moment is pricing against something that no longer exists.

I had a client a while back, and I will call her Sally. Sally wanted to move to Vancouver Island for a work opportunity. We listed her townhome in the Grandview area at the beginning of 2025, while the market was sliding. Grandview townhomes at that time were plentiful and similar to each other in age, style, and build, which meant price was doing most of the work. Sally was not ready to hear how serious the shift was.

Months went by. When the job became real, she called and asked for the honest number. I told her the strategy works, that every other home we listed in that stretch had sold, and that the difference between the sellers who transacted and the one who did not was a willingness to respond to conditions. Her new price was $80,000 below where she started. Waiting cost her $80,000. Watch this part at 8:16 for the full story.

Worth knowing what a lot of us who have been around a while are seeing in the pattern. This market looks more like 2010 through 2015 than the decade that followed. Detached homes rose about 20% across those five years, which works out to roughly 3.7% compounding a year. Steady, unspectacular, nothing like the double digit years between 2015 and 2022. If that is the shape of the next stretch, waiting for a fast recovery is waiting for a market that may not show up.

Quick Stat: From 2010 to 2015, detached prices in this region rose about 20% in total, a compounding rate near 3.7% a year.

Why the gap matters more than your sale price

The third mistake is the expensive one, and it is the one almost nobody accounts for. It is failing to appreciate what I call the spread.

Most people selling a home are selling in order to buy another one. In that case the sale price by itself tells you very little. The gap between what you sell for and what you pay is the only number that decides how you come out. Watch this part at 13:10 where I walk through the math.

Prices move like a tide. When detached values fall, townhomes and condos usually follow. When detached values rise, they pull the other two up with them. It does not happen on the same day, but it happens. Regardless of the size of the boat, the tide affects all of them.

Here is what that looks like in real numbers. Detached benchmark prices in this area sat around $1.843 million at the start of 2025. By July 2026 they were about $1.696 million, a drop of $147,000, or roughly 8%. Townhomes in the same area went from about $933,000 to about $853,000, a drop of $80,000, or roughly 8.8%. Both fell by nearly the same percentage, which is the tide doing exactly what it does.

Now picture the townhome owner who wants a detached home. They are frustrated because their townhome was worth $933,000 and is now worth $853,000. They feel down $80,000, and that feeling is legitimate.

But run the other side. If the market had stayed flat, their townhome would still be $933,000 and the detached home they want would still be $1.843 million. Because the market moved, they sell for $80,000 less and buy for $147,000 less. Selling $80,000 lower to buy $147,000 lower is a better trade, not a worse one.

Most people are not jumping from an $800,000 townhome to a $1.8 million detached home, so your own spread will be narrower than that example. The direction still holds. In a softening market, the move up buyer usually comes out ahead, because the more expensive property falls further in dollar terms than the one they are selling.

Pro Tip: Before you decide anything, work out both numbers on paper. What your home realistically sells for today, and what your next home realistically costs today. The difference is your answer.

That is also where the mechanics matter. Whether you sell first or buy first changes your risk on both ends, and if there is any overlap you will want to understand bridge financing and your real carrying costs before you commit to a plan. On the listing side, how you price your home to sell in a market with this much inventory is the single biggest lever you control.

I want to leave you with one more idea, because it is the one that gets people unstuck.

Consider buying to live, not for profit. It is your life and you can wait as long as you want. Sometimes a person genuinely needs a certain number to make their next step work, and that is real. More often the number is one they attached to, and it is not achievable in this market.

The cost of holding out for it does not land on the market. It lands on the household. It is the family who does not get closer to the new school, does not get the shorter commute, does not get the backyard, does not get the extra bedroom before the baby arrives. Those are the people paying for the wait.

So look at what homes in your pocket are actually worth today. I broke down what homes cost neighbourhood by neighbourhood across South Surrey and White Rock, and the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board publishes updated benchmarks every month. Check the spread, avoid the three traps above, and decide based on your own numbers and your own timeline. Watch the full video above for the complete walkthrough, including the graphs behind the benchmark comparisons.