Ask what a government should do when a housing market finally begins to correct, when prices soften, and buyers finally regain bargaining power. The answer is simple. Let it happen.
British Columbia’s premier has chosen the opposite. David Eby, with Prime Minister Mark Carney beside him, proposes buying more than 2,200 condominiums built by private developers that cannot be sold, then converting them into rent-to-own homes under BC Housing. The governments put the total near $1.5 billion.
By their own accounting, only about $300 million of that is public cash, $150 million from Ottawa and $150 million from Victoria, with the rest raised as debt the taxpayer still backs. The Vancouver brokerage Goodman Commercial reads the bill higher, pricing 2,200 units at roughly $1.1 million each, or $2.2 to $2.5 billion before conversion costs.
Look first at what the market has been doing without any help. CMHC counted 4,376 completed and unsold condos in the Vancouver region in May, a 76 per cent jump in a single year. Presales have cratered. Industry figures put presale sales across British Columbia at nearly 6,000 units in the first quarter of 2021 and 124 in the first quarter of 2026.
Developers now dangle cash-back credits, free parking, and reduced deposits. Thind Properties saw its nearly finished Eclipse tower in Burnaby forced into creditor protection by its lender, and Symphony Homes filed to protect a Burnaby townhouse project this June. TD Economics expects the slide to continue, forecasting the deepest correction in Greater Vancouver since 2005.
What’s a government to do ? None of this is a crisis. It is a correction, and correction is the only force that has ever made housing cheaper.
