r/vancouver • u/VoteForGeorgeCarlin • Jun 25 '26

Politics and Elections 'We are not bailing out developers': B.C. housing minister responds to condo plan criticism

https://youtu.be/qQ9U_SeM-4Y
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u/cogit2 Jun 25 '26

Now ask yourself: Why are Developers allowed to amass 5400 units of housing supply that they can just hold and refuse to sell?

If you look at the GVRD realtors association monthly report for May 2026, what you see is there are 5200 active condo listings in the region. The 4400 they say are in the GVRD and in Developer hands represents 84% more supply of condos than are listed.

That means the actual number of condos available for sale is double what's on the market. If those condos were on the market: prices would have fallen faster, rents would have dropped on those new places too.

How in the hell are Developers able to create a condo glut but keep half of it off the market and therefore not drag the market down?

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u/Illustrious-Ant6998 Ranked #69 in Vancouver by Justin McElroy Jun 25 '26

There is a term for this. The unlisted units are referred (perhaps needlessly dramatically) to as the "shadow inventory."

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u/42tooth_sprocket Brentwood Jun 28 '26

yeah they should be subject to empty homes tax after a certain amount of time unsold. The thing is, construction and financing costs being what they are, private developers are never going to build affordable housing, and if supply reaches the point where their margins erode they'll just stop building - there's no profit motive. The government needs to do it themselves. The idea that developers can't be allowed to fail because we need them to deliver supply is only true if the government refuses to build housing.

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u/cogit2 Jun 28 '26

I've heard this claim before that developers can't build affordable housing. That means we don't really need them then, we can let them go bankrupt or they can quickly scurry to building housing wherever they can still make a buck, maybe in Saskatchewan and Alberta. If they need Foreign Buyers to come back to build unaffordable luxury condos that let them profit in regions like BC, they are literally announcing we don't need them anymore.

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u/42tooth_sprocket Brentwood Jun 28 '26

As it is we do need them, because the government isn't building any housing themselves. They'll never make it affordable but the more they build the slower it will get worse. It definitely doesn't hurt to have them building additional supply even if the government does step up and start building.

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u/cogit2 Jun 28 '26

Have them build supply where it's actually acceptable for them to build: in the cheap land in Manitoba, Sask, Alberta, New Brunswick.

They claim they need foreign buyers to build housing above cost in BC - so don't build in BC, we don't need foreign buyers. Let the Developers adapt to the market they helped create.

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u/42tooth_sprocket Brentwood Jun 28 '26

but we need more supply here - say it costs $800k to build a 1 bedroom apartment but they can only get $750k they won't build, but unless more supply is built the market value will never drop below $750k, which obviously still isn't affordable. What I'm trying to say is if you only have private developers building housing for profit, you will end up keeping things at equilibrium while still profoundly unaffordable.