Record total of 19,000 new rental homes registered in BC in 2023

Record total of over 19,000 rental homes newly registered in British Columbia in 2023

The new Yarrow and Aster secured purpose-built rental housing buidings at 444 Kootenay Street and 435 Boundary Road on Hastings Street in Vancouver. (PCI Developments)

The final tally of new home registrations in British Columbia in 2023 shows a new record of secured purpose-built rental homes, with 19,064 units of this tenure registered throughout the year.

According to the provincial government, this is the highest annual total for secured purpose-built rental homes since BC Housing started collecting the data in 2002.

Secured purpose-built rental homes should not be confused with privately owned condominiums or individually leased properties.

You might also like:

“New registrations” are counted as the step builders take just before the issuance of building permits and the start of construction. This is for a public registry administered by BC Housing to better track housing needs and outcomes.

The secured purpose-built rental homes registration tally for 2023 is a 31% increase from 2022, representing 49% of all multi-family unit registrations last year. Although the numbers are significant, it will take a few years for the impact to take effect — when these rental homes reach completion and are ready for occupancy.

The number of new secured purpose-built rental home registrations has been growing over the past few years — a stark contrast from the dearth of completions for much of the past few decades, which greatly contributed to BC’s current housing affordability and supply crisis.

For secured purpose-built rental housing registrations, 2016 saw 5,272 registrations, 2017 saw 9,272 registrations, 2018 saw 7,688 registrations, 2019 saw 13,252 registrations, 2020 saw 8,775 registrations, 2021 saw 13,134 registrations, and 2022 saw 14,561 registrations. This is up from just 2,178 in 2002 or only 1,948 as recently as 2012.

For the month of December 2023 alone, BC Housing recorded 16 new secured purpose-built rental housing buildings, with 44% containing between 51 and 100 units and 31% containing over 100 units.

“Our government’s actions to tackle the housing crisis are starting to take hold as evidenced in the record-setting number of purpose-built homes registered in BC last year,” said Ravi Kahlon, BC Minister of Housing, in a statement.

“When you compare that to the fewer than 2,000 rental units registered in 2012, it’s quite remarkable how the landscape has changed under our government. I’d like to thank our province’s construction industry for its work to get more homes built for the people of BC.”

Overall, including ownership homes, a total of 45,647 new homes were registered in BC in 2023, including 6,522 single-family detached houses and 39,125 multi-family units, including condominiums. This total tally was down by 10% compared to 2022, with multi-family registrations falling by 7.1% and single-family detached house registrations dropping by 24.5%.

Within Metro Vancouver, there is a new wave of secured purpose-built rental housing construction projects, including a new wave of such proposals in recent months within the city of Vancouver. This includes the conversion of some future condominium projects into rental housing uses due to the current real estate market conditions.

A wide range of policies and strategies recently implemented by municipal, provincial, and federal governments are catalyzing new rental housing projects. This includes the provincial and federal governments providing low-cost construction financing to private and non-profit developers to build such developments.

You might also like: