The big drop in Vancouver home prices over the last year has the city’s housing market ranked near the bottom of a major global index. When inflation is factored in, Swiss bank UBS finds Vancouver’s home prices have dropped approximately 10 percent since mid-2025. Of the major cities it tracks in its Global Real Estate Bubble Index, the city came second-last—only ahead of Toronto. “Demand has been a lot slower over the past few years, and so inventory—whether it’s existing inventory or … new, unsold inventory—it’s just going to weigh on the market, and that’s going to be the case until demand can pick up and lower some of that inventory and we can get back to something more balanced,” B.C. Real Estate Association chief economist Brendon Ogmundson told CTV News on Thursday. One of the big factors pulling prices down further is a major shift in immigration, with the federal government reversing course on record population growth seen during former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s time in office. “The easy answer is the changed immigration,” said Tom Davidoff, an associate professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business on the UBS report and Vancouver’s low placing on price growth. “When you go from low interest rates and high growth to higher interest rates and low growth, that is devastating for property values.” With a provincial election underway, any major policy changes could play a role in where prices go moving forward. “The NDP has put in place a lot of policies—from our point of view, some bad, some good. We don’t like things like the speculation and vacancy tax, but we do like changes to zoning and trying to encourage more density around transit and that kind of thing,” Ogmundson said of how the election could impact housing prices. And while Vancouver home prices have fallen, this may not be over yet. With many new units not selling and the risk of potential interest rate hikes ahead, the report warns that could weigh on home prices in the near term.
