Why BC Is Buying Up Empty Condos and What It Means Locally

What does the BC government buying unsold condos mean for the local market?

The federal government and the Province of British Columbia are moving to buy more than 2,200 unsold condo units and turn them into affordable, rent-to-own homes. It is one of the largest direct moves into the housing market I have seen in years, and it pulls a big block of finished, standing inventory off the open market all at once. If you own, are buying, or are getting ready to sell a condo in White Rock or South Surrey, this changes the supply picture you are competing in, even if the units themselves are miles away.

Let me walk through what is actually happening, why there are thousands of empty condos in the first place, and how I would think about it if you have a move on the horizon.

Why are there thousands of empty condos in BC right now?

Start with the number, because it is the part that stops people cold. According to CMHC, Metro Vancouver had 4,376 completed and unsold condo units in May 2026. That is up roughly 76 percent from a year earlier. These are not projects still wrapped in scaffolding. They are finished, ready to live in, and sitting there without a buyer.

Quick Stat: 4,376 completed condos sat empty across Metro Vancouver in May 2026, about 76 percent more than the year before.

So how did we get here? Two forces ran straight into each other. A wave of condo projects was planned years ago, and a large share of it was aimed at investors rather than people who would actually live in the units. The pitch was simple: buy a presale, wait for it to finish, and either flip it or rent it out at a profit. Then interest rates climbed. The cheap financing that made those numbers work disappeared, monthly carrying costs jumped, and the easy appreciation stopped. Investors who had counted on all three walked away from completions, and many of the end users those towers were built for could no longer qualify or no longer wanted to pay the price. The result was thousands of completed homes with nobody to buy them.

The concentration matters as much as the total. This empty inventory is heaviest in a handful of hubs, places like Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, and Port Moody, where a lot of investor-focused towers were approved and completed around the same window. When you see a headline about “BC” drowning in empty condos, understand that the flood is pooled in specific postal codes, not spread evenly across the province.

Reality Check: Most of that empty inventory sits in a few Metro Vancouver hubs, not in White Rock or South Surrey. A regional headline is not a local forecast for your building.

Here is how the program itself works. The two governments plan to acquire up to 2,200 of these completed units through Build Canada Homes and BC Housing, at below-market prices, ideally below what it cost to build them. The units are then offered to British Columbians through a rent-to-own model rather than a straight sale. The total spend lands around 1.45 billion dollars, with the federal government covering roughly 10 percent, the province putting in a similar share of direct funding, and the balance structured as financing that gets repaid over time out of program revenue. You can read the federal housing plan on the Government of Canada pages, and the completed and unsold data I quoted comes straight from CMHC.

It is not free of critics, and I will be honest about that. Some people argue this props up developers who made bad bets and keeps prices higher than they would fall on their own. Others see it as a practical way to turn empty buildings into homes families can rent and eventually own, instead of letting finished units rot on a spreadsheet. Both of those things can be true at once. I am not here to tell you how to feel about the politics. My job is to tell you what it does to the market you are buying or selling in.

What the condo buy-up means if you own, buy, or sell in White Rock and South Surrey

This is the part that actually touches your plans, so let me break it down by where you sit.

If you own a condo and you are weighing a sale, the word to focus on is supply. Every unit the government absorbs into this program is a unit that is no longer sitting on the open market competing with yours. Fewer competing listings, all else being equal, is a friendlier backdrop for a seller. I want to be careful here, because that does not mean prices leap overnight. It means the wall of unsold new-build product that has been hanging over the condo market gets a little shorter, and a shorter wall is easier to sell around. If you want to see where condo values actually sit across our area today, I broke it down neighbourhood by neighbourhood in my guide to how much homes cost in South Surrey and White Rock. Pricing off a realistic local benchmark has always mattered more than reacting to a provincial storyline, and it matters even more when the storyline is loud.

If you are buying, this cuts two ways, and I would not let anyone sell you a one-line takeaway on it. Less standing inventory can mean less choice and a bit more competition for the genuinely good units, especially if the program pulls supply off the market faster than fresh listings replace it. That is the pressure that pushes prices up. On the other side, if your plan was to scoop a deeply discounted brand-new unit from a developer who needed to move product, understand that a chunk of exactly that distressed inventory is about to leave the open market and head into a government program. If you are weighing an apartment against a little more room, read my breakdown of how to choose between a condo and a townhome before you commit, and if you are comparing brand-new against resale, my notes on new construction versus resale homes lay out the real trade-offs.

Did You Know?: The units in this program are slated for a rent-to-own model, so they leave the ownership market rather than coming back later as resale competition.

If you rent now and hope to own, this program is aimed squarely at you. A rent-to-own unit lets you move in as a tenant and build toward ownership over time, which can be a real path for people who can carry a monthly payment but have not yet saved a full down payment. The catch is in the details. Who qualifies, how the eventual purchase price is set, and how many of these units land anywhere near our area will decide whether it genuinely helps South Surrey and White Rock renters or mostly serves the hubs where the empty towers already stand. I will be watching how it rolls out, and I will update my read as the terms become clear.

If you are doing both at once, selling one place and buying the next, the two effects partly cancel each other out. You get thinner competition on the sale side and you face it on the buy side. For you, the thing that decides the outcome is timing and local numbers, not the national headline. Line up your sale and your purchase carefully, know your real net proceeds before you shop, and do not let a policy announcement rush a decision that should turn on your own math.

That is the theme I want to leave you with, because it is the one that protects your money. This is a Metro Vancouver story with a Metro Vancouver cause. White Rock and South Surrey are their own market, with their own supply, their own buyers, and their own price behaviour. Our condo prices barely move between neighbourhoods here, and our inventory has never looked like Burnaby’s. The right move is to look at what is genuinely listed in your neighbourhood and your building type, not to react to a number about a tower forty minutes up the highway. The Fraser Valley Real Estate Board publishes local benchmark prices, sales, and active listing counts every month, and that is the figure that actually tells you what is happening on your street.

Pro Tip: Before you act on any housing headline, check the current benchmark price and active listing count for your exact property type in your exact area. The local number is the one that pays your mortgage.

None of this is a reason to panic, and it is not a reason to rush. It is a shift in the supply backdrop that is worth understanding before you list or before you write an offer. A program this size will take time to work through, the numbers will get revised, and the effect on any single building in our area will be smaller and slower than the headline suggests. Watch it, factor it in, and keep your decision anchored to your own timeline and your own property.

If you own or are shopping for a condo in White Rock or South Surrey and you want to work out how this shift affects your specific plans, reach out. I am glad to look at your building, your timeline, and the current numbers with you, and give you a straight read on whether any of this actually changes your move. You can call me at 604-670-7052 or send a note through my site, and I will help you figure out the right next step.