Vancouver delivered 2,300 units of rental housing in 2025 — the highest in 40 years
Vancouver saw 2,300 purpose-built market rental units completed in 2025, the highest in four decades.
This is alongside 730 social housing units and 1,261 ground-oriented homes.
“We’re proud to be delivering more housing, faster for Vancouverites,” said Mayor Ken Sim, in a release.
“It’s important that those who work in Vancouver can afford to live in Vancouver, including the teachers, health care workers, families, and small businesses who are essential to our city’s liveability and economic growth.”
Data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation also confirms this, which recorded over 30,000 housing completions across Metro Vancouver, 5,000 more than in 2024.
“We experienced a surge of housing completions — both in condominium and rental space — in the past year … and we expect this to continue for the next couple of years,” Shiva Moshtari-Doust, CMHC’s lead economist for B.C., told Daily Hive in March.
City surpasses home approval target
The City also approved 12,795 new homes in 2025, exceeding its annual target of 8,300 by over 50 per cent. Eighty per cent of these (10,277) are purpose-built rentals.
Josh White, Vancouver’s general manager of planning, urban design, and sustainability, attributed some of the success to the City’s below-market rental program (BMR), which allows developers additional density if they provide below-market rents.
“In 2025, the program secured over 1,400 BMR homes, more than double the annual target of 550. This demonstrates the effectiveness of City policies in supporting deeper affordability through private-sector development,” he said in a release.
The City approved its 10-year housing targets in June 2024, with the goal to approve 83,000 new homes in Vancouver by 2033, with 40 per cent of those family-sized housing, 75 per cent rental housing, and 20 per cent below-market. The City also has the goal to increase missing middle options, like townhomes and multiplexes.
It set these targets based on its 2017 Housing Strategy and the Provincial Housing Target Order.
B.C.’s housing targets required Vancouver to build 28,900 net new housing units over five years, from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2028. These must be new units ready for move-in, not just approvals.
Vancouver came up short in the second year of these housing targets, which measured the period between October 2024 and September 2025. The City recorded 4,845 homes reaching completion, 90 per cent of the target of 5,395 net new homes.
Vancouver was among the first batch of 10 cities in 2023 for which B.C. legislated housing targets. Other Lower Mainland municipalities on the list included Abbotsford, Delta, North Vancouver, Port Moody, and West Vancouver.
In August 2025, B.C. announced targets for a fourth batch of cities, including Burnaby, Coquitlam, Langley Township, and Richmond.
With files from Kenneth Chan
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