There’s an interesting contradiction developing in British Columbia’s housing market.
On one hand, governments continue to push for more housing and we are still seeing plenty of cranes across Metro Vancouver. On the other, the pipeline of new ownership housing is weakening quickly. Developers are selling fewer presale condos, projects are being delayed or cancelled, and an increasing share of the new homes being built are purpose-built rentals.
That matters because the housing being built today is the housing that will be available several years from now.
The most important number to watch is housing starts, when construction actually begins on a project.
CMHC’s latest Vancouver supply report shows just how significant the change has been. Condominium apartment starts fell 40% in the first half of 2026, making it the weakest first half for condo construction in Vancouver since 2011. CMHC expects the decline in apartment starts to be the main driver behind lower overall housing construction in the years ahead.
And this isn’t simply a Vancouver phenomenon. Across B.C., the number of new homes registered with BC Housing was down 17.5% in the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025. Multi-unit registrations were down 17.7%.
The concern isn’t necessarily what this means for the market today. It’s what it means two, three or four years from now, when today’s cancelled or delayed projects would otherwise have become completed homes.
For years, the presale model has been the engine behind much of Metro Vancouver’s condo construction. Developers launch a project, sell a significant percentage of the units, use those sales to satisfy financing requirements, and then construction gets underway.
That model is under serious pressure.
CMHC says condominium presales have collapsed, with weak buyer demand, high construction costs and growing inventories of completed and unsold units making it increasingly difficult for developers to justify new projects. CMHC’s 2026 outlook expects more condominium projects to be postponed or cancelled, with the effects extending into 2027 and 2028.
This creates a difficult cycle: buyers are hesitant to commit to a home that won’t be completed for several years, while developers can’t proceed with many projects unless enough buyers commit.
Here’s where the story gets particularly interesting.
Purpose-built rental housing now represents approximately 60% of Vancouver’s housing starts, compared with less than 20% a decade ago. CMHC says rental units increased roughly 36% compared with 2025 and that developers are increasingly favouring rental projects because of rental-focused government policies, financing programs and incentives.
The B.C. New Homes Registry tells a similar story. In the first seven months of 2026, 15,245 purpose-built rental units were registered across the province. That’s roughly 65% of all multi-unit registrations during the period.
There is an important distinction here: B.C. isn’t necessarily building dramatically less housing across every category. The mix of housing being built is changing. More of the new supply is rental, while ownership-oriented condo construction is shrinking.
The financial pressure is also showing up in the courts.
There isn’t a single official number for “B.C. developers that have gone insolvent,” because development companies often operate through separate corporations for individual projects. But there are now numerous examples of B.C. development projects entering receivership or other insolvency proceedings, including Westbank’s Joyce 2 rental tower, which was placed into receivership in 2026.
The irony is that the current housing market may be planting the seeds of its next supply problem.
Right now, buyers have more choice in many segments, rental supply is expanding and the market is considerably different from the frenzy we saw a few years ago. But construction decisions made today don’t show up in housing supply tomorrow—they show up years later.
CMHC estimates that Vancouver still faces a 5,000-to-7,000-home annual supply gap relative to the number of starts needed to restore 2019 affordability levels by 2036. At the same time, the largest source of new ownership housing—condominiums—is experiencing its weakest construction period in more than a decade.
So while the cranes haven’t disappeared, the bigger question is what happens when the cranes stop going up?
That may ultimately be the more important new-construction story in B.C. right now.