The city is home to one of Canada's most notoriously unaffordable property markets
Metro Vancouver's cooling housing market has failed to ease affordability pressures for families, even as median home prices have retreated from their pandemic peak.
According to analysis by Tegan Hill and Austin Thompson of the Fraser Institute, the market's decline has created a perverse dynamic where lower prices further discourage new construction at a time when supply is desperately needed.
In 2023, a typical family in Metro Vancouver earned $64,660 annually after tax, while a median home cost $1.17 million.
"A typical family had to save $238,240—equal to more than three-and-a-half years of its after-tax income—for a 20 per cent downpayment," Hill and Thompson noted in their analysis.
Even with such a substantial down payment, the resulting mortgage of $6,052 monthly would exceed the family's entire after-tax monthly income.
Meanwhile, a new analysis from Ratehub.ca found that the benchmark home price in Vancouver dropped $9,600 to $1,132,500, reducing the income required to qualify for a mortgage by $1,800.
The rental market offers little respite. Metro Vancouver ranked as Canada's second-least affordable rental market in 2023, with median rents consuming 31.8% of after-tax family income, up from 26.3% a decade earlier. That represents a monthly rental cost of approximately $1,715.
The barriers to new construction are systemic. Municipal approvals in Vancouver require 7.7 months on average, more than double the 3.4 months needed in Edmonton or 3.2 months in Regina.
High-rise development fees compound the problem—Vancouver charges $30,900 per unit compared to $9,300 in Edmonton.
According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Vancouver saw a 36% decline in actual housing starts in October, experiencing steep drops in multi-unit and single-detached construction.
Canada’s housing construction sector took a sharper-than-expected downturn in October, with national housing starts dropping 17% from the previous month, according to new data from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).https://t.co/XhN4ZkafUD
— Canadian Mortgage Professional Magazine (@CMPmagazine) November 18, 2025
"Builders would build more homes in Metro Vancouver, despite falling prices, if not for lengthy approval processes and costly government fees," Hill and Thompson said. These policy-driven obstacles are particularly damaging when developer margins are already squeezed by declining values.
While federal immigration policy has increased housing demand across the Lower Mainland, local governments retain direct control over the approval timelines and fee structures that constrain supply.
Removing these barriers remains essential to meaningfully improving housing affordability for families currently locked out of homeownership and facing spiraling rental costs.
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