British Columbia housing market

New-home prices

Statistics Canada's new housing price index for British Columbia stood at 122.5 in Sep 2026, down 2.3% from a year earlier, compared with down 2.0% for Canada as a whole.

With December 2016 set to 100, the index means builders are charging about 22.5% more for a comparable new home than they did then.

The index peaked at 128.7 in Jul 2022 and is now 4.8% below that high, so new-home prices have given back part of their earlier gains.

The index tracks contractors' selling prices for new homes of the same specifications. It does not cover resale homes, so it shows builder pricing rather than the whole market.

Population and housing need

British Columbia's population was estimated at 5,710,598 (Jul 1, 2026), growing 0.1% over the year.

Borrowing costs

Borrowers who took out a new uninsured mortgage in Aug 2026 paid an average of 4.58% on fixed terms of five years or more and 3.90% on variable rates, according to the Bank of Canada. The five-year-plus fixed average is up 0.3 percentage points from a year earlier.

Variable rates sit 0.68 points below long fixed terms, so borrowers are paying a premium for payment certainty.

The Bank of Canada's policy rate is 2.50% and the banks' prime rate is 4.70%. Variable-rate mortgages are priced off prime, so they move when the policy rate changes; fixed rates follow Government of Canada bond yields, with the 5-year yield at 3.46%.