Opinion: What Metro Vancouver’s unsold condos tell us about housing expectations | Daily Hive

Century City Holland Park at Surrey City Centre. (Century Group)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Joanne Shao, who is the vice president of development for Century Group.

Walk into any conversation about housing in Metro Vancouver today, and you’ll hear a familiar explanation for why condominium sales have stalled relative to other housing types: homes are too small, and buyers simply don’t want them.

It is an understandable conclusion, but size alone doesn’t explain what we are seeing in the market.

Recent market data from Real Property Data shows that more than 40 per cent of the unsold concrete inventory in Metro Vancouver consists of two‑bedroom homes, not micro‑units.

Across the region, an unusually large number of completed concrete condominium homes sit unsold, many of them established in urban centres, close to public transit, shops, services, and employment. Many offer the things we regularly associate with good urban living: quality construction, modern building systems, amenities, security, public transit access, and convenient locations.

Size alone isn’t the issue holding buyers back. Price is undoubtedly a major part of it.

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Buyers are cautious, borrowing costs still matter, and after years of rising housing costs, people are understandably looking very closely at what they are getting for their money.

Buyers are also making different trade-offs. For some households, moving into a larger home means putting significantly more of their income and savings into housing. They may decide that the additional space is not worth giving up financial flexibility or other investment opportunities.

At the same time, building new housing in Metro Vancouver remains expensive. Land, labour, materials, financing, municipal fees, infrastructure, and increasingly complex construction requirements by governments all contribute to the cost of delivering a new home. Meanwhile, expectations for new housing have steadily increased.

We want homes that are well-designed and spacious. We want quality finishes, useful amenities, sustainable buildings, strong public spaces, public transit access, and complete neighbourhoods. Those are reasonable expectations, and many of them are important to the long-term success of our communities. But they also come at a cost. That is one of the harder parts of the housing conversation.

We want greater affordability without sacrificing the qualities that make a home and a neighbourhood a great place to live. Finding that balance is becoming one of the central challenges facing our industry, municipalities, and buyers alike.

As housing attainability becomes increasingly important, we also need to think about liveability more broadly than square footage. It means having shops, services, and daily necessities within walking distance, particularly for older residents who want to remain in their communities or close to their families. It means paying close attention to indoor and outdoor spaces that bring people of different generations together, creating places where people actually want to spend time.

A few extra square feet do not necessarily make a home better if they do not improve its functionality. Smart layouts, proportion, natural light, storage and airflow can have a much greater impact on everyday life. As an industry, the challenge is to make the space we build work as well as possible while balancing affordability, construction costs and evolving expectations.

The same applies to amenities. More is not necessarily better. The most successful shared spaces are the ones residents actually use and value, whether that is a fitness space, a place to work outside the home, a welcoming common room, or an outdoor space that extends the way people live beyond their individual units.

As we build greater density, what happens outside the home becomes more important. When private space is limited, the surrounding community has to work harder. Parks, plazas, courtyards, shops, cafes, trees, sidewalks and places to sit and gather all contribute to the experience of living in a denser neighbourhood. These are not finishing touches. They are part of what makes density work and are essential urban infrastructure that foster social connection, support daily health, and improve local climate resilience through natural cooling and rainwater absorption.

Metro Vancouver has great examples of this. Vancouver’s Olympic Village neighbourhood shows how density, waterfront access, and a strong public realm can work together. The Shipyards on North Vancouver’s Lonsdale waterfront illustrate what happens when public spaces become a genuine place to gather. The River District in southeast Vancouver demonstrates how the different pieces of a neighbourhood can be built out over time.

There is no single formula that works everywhere, but these examples reinforce something our industry continues to learn: people experience a community at ground level, not from a site plan. These are questions the entire development industry is working through, including us.

At Century City Holland Park in Surrey City Centre, that has meant thinking not only about the homes themselves but also about how people move through the community, where they gather, what happens at street level, and how green space and public areas connect the development to the surrounding neighbourhood. It is one approach within a much larger conversation about how we continue to build housing in a region where land is expensive, construction is complex, and affordability remains a serious challenge.

There are no easy answers. We need homes people can afford. We also need to make good use of the land and infrastructure we have, create neighbourhoods that work over the long term, and be realistic about the trade-offs involved in delivering all of those things.

Today’s slower housing market gives developers, planners, and municipalities an opportunity to look more closely at what people value, where costs and expectations collide and how we can continue to improve the way higher-density mixed-use communities are designed. These communities are also an important part of the housing mix, creating options for seniors looking to downsize or make a change, and for younger households looking to take their first step into homeownership.

The conversation shouldn’t be only about how many square feet are behind the front door. It should also be about how well those square feet and the surrounding community support everyday life.

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