2026 Mid-Year Review
Volatility defined the first half – and the discourse that followed
From the entire team at Goodman Commercial, we’re pleased to present our 2026 Mid-Year Report.
Volatility was again the defining condition of the first half of 2026. A steady Bank of Canada rate was supposed to bring investors certainty. Instead, an oil shock pushed inflation back above 3%, and businesses and investors were left in limbo, unable to see what came next. Meanwhile, completed and unsold condos piled up, and landlords were capped at a paltry 2.3% allowable increase on existing tenancies while facing softer demand and lower rents on vacant units.
As readers have counted on for over four decades, the report distills the past six months of market activity into the numbers and trends that matter – along with our take on the discourse shaping the apartment industry today.
Inside you’ll find:
- Rental Roulette: why pivoting a stalled condo project to purpose-built rental is not a silver bullet – it is a different business, with different capital, a longer hold, and a market that looks nothing like the one these projects were conceived in.
- Biting the Hand That Builds: rather than treating the inventory overhang as a lesson in how slowly this industry can respond to a demand shock, politicians used it as another chance to punch down on the companies that built the units they spent a decade demanding.
- The Great Bailout Nobody Can Define: Carney and Eby’s 2,200-unit announcement still lacks the terms that would tell a developer whether to sell, hold, or wait – and we have seen this movie before with the BC Rental Protection Fund.
- Long-Nosed Leadership: falling rents are real, and welcome. They are also the product of a federal immigration cap colliding with a wave of supply conceived in 2020–22, not nine years of NDP housing policy. The same agenda has already started to shut off the next pipeline.
Plus:
- Transactions were up 19% to 38 sales, but dollar volume fell 35% to $350.1 million – the lowest first-half total since 2014 and 61% below the 10-year average.
- This was a market of singles and doubles. Average deal size dropped below $10 million for the first time since 2016. Only two deals topped $25 million. Not a single transaction reached $30 million.
- Buyers gravitated to neighbourhoods with solid fundamentals and long-term appeal. 32 of 38 transactions – 84% – closed in Vancouver, Burnaby’s Metrotown, and North Vancouver’s Lonsdale corridor.
- Private buyers accounted for 90% of activity. Institutional and non-profit buyers, who represented 26% of transactions in the first half of 2025, were scarce.
- On average, cap rates moved only modestly – but 4.5% to 5.0% yields are no longer a rarity.
- Big second half on the way: Goodman Commercial closed six deals valued at nearly $50 million in the first six months, has another six transactions valued at over $100 million already in the pipeline, and currently holds 28 active listings totalling over $650 million.
The issue also recaps a strong year for the firm. We were the leading team in the province across all asset classes, with 11 deals and 11% of market share among Business in Vancouver’s Top 100 Biggest Real Estate Deals of 2025. Mark returns to the Canadian Apartment Investment Conference in Toronto on September 9th. Connect CRE honoured the firm with its 2026 Canadian Transactions of the Year Award for the court-ordered sale of the Siena project in Burnaby.
As always, we aim to keep clients and readers informed and ready to act. We welcome your feedback – reach out anytime to discuss market trends, policy changes, or opportunities to sell your property.