The unsold inventory includes a range of sizes, with larger, two- and three-bedroom units making up a significant share of what’s still on the market

Thousands of new condos are sitting unsold across Metro Vancouver, leaving developers with about $4.4 billion worth of finished-but-vacant real estate, new research shows.

And they aren’t all tiny condos often geared at investors. The unsold inventory includes a range of sizes, with larger, two- and three-bedroom units making up a significant share of what’s still on the market.

“It’s actually not as weighted heavily towards the smaller units, as one may think,” said Darcy Rai, president of the Vancouver-based real estate analytics firm Real Property Data.

For years, condo buildings started selling units before they were finished, and the smaller homes sold first, Rai said. “For the last decade, presales have cleared from the bottom of the price sheet up. What’s left standing today is the larger, higher-priced end of each project, where fewer buyers were willing to commit years ahead based on a floor plan.”

Some have been sitting empty for years. More than 1,300 of the empty homes are in buildings that were completed at least two years ago, according to a report the firm released this month.

Rai said that, in general, units that are priced at a premium are the ones that are left finished but unsold as buyers shift to more-affordable neighbourhoods where they can get more space at a lower price.

“So, the stuff that’s left is the more expensive units,” he said,

That dovetails with what Andy Yan, director of the City program at Simon Fraser University, has found, which is that more than 80 per cent of the unsold units are priced over $1 million.

Zonda Urban, another Vancouver-based real estate analytics firm, counted just over 5,300 finished-but-unsold condos and townhomes across Metro as of Monday, including 1,200 in Burnaby, 958 in Vancouver, 816 in Richmond, 559 in Surrey and 543 in the Coquitlam-Port Moody region.

Jon Bennest, vice-president of product development, agreed that most of the unsold inventory skews toward larger, more-expensive units.

However, he said no amount of tinkering with unit mixes would’ve spared homebuilders launching new highrises a few years ago, at the peak of the market, from today’s challenges.

“There was not really a unit mix you could design that would be an elixir for today’s market conditions,” he said.

A large share of these unsold units are in highrise towers built near transit-oriented corridors, Bennest said.

In Burnaby and Coquitlam-Port Moody, more highrise towers have been released over the past eight years, as development has grown in transit-oriented areas like Brentwood, Lougheed, Metrotown, Edmonds and Burquitlam, Bennest said.

In Richmond, there have been several large concrete condo projects near the Canada Line and, more specifically, the Capstan Station, which have also resulted in a lot of unsold units in the area, he added.

Typically it costs developers more to build concrete highrises, which is why they’ve tended to sell units in those at a premium, he said. It wasn’t uncommon to find units in some Burnaby highrise towers in early 2022, during the peak presale frenzy, going for $1,400 a square foot.

“Based on the increasing costs to build, higher presale prices for condos launched between 2019 and 2025 needed to be priced at those higher values in order to be viable,” he said.

Today an end-user would likely pay closer to $1,000 to $1,100 a square foot for a new condo in that location, he said.

Some developers who’ve held on to their standing inventory have implemented some price reductions, through flash sales and other promotions, but not enough to lead to large-scale entry from investors.

“There’s been some price reductions. But it’s selective. Or limited time only,” he said.

Many highrise condo projects over the past few years have converted to rental.

“But it’s not the first option (developers) would prefer,” he said.

Real Property Data estimates the unsold condo stock is worth $4.4 billion, based on what similar condos sold for in 2026.

Larger condos, 1,500 square feet or bigger, had an unsold rate of 41.6 per cent compared with 12.2 per cent for smaller condos under 500 square feet, according to the firm.

The same pattern appeared by bedroom count. Three-bedroom condos had the highest unsold rate among the common unit types, at 27.3 per cent, followed by two-bedroom units at 22.5 per cent. One-bedroom condos had a lower unsold rate of 13.7 per cent.

Real Property Data has even more granular research showing that developer Ledingham McAllister holds 722 of the finished-and-unsold units across six completed towers in Burnaby and Coquitlam. At Icon at Southgate City, in a 46-storey tower that was completed about a year ago, there are 266 unsold units out of 352 released, according to the firm.

Anthem Properties holds the next-highest number of units at 458, and Westbank holds the next-highest by value, with 150 units unsold out of 331 released at The Butterfly in downtown Vancouver, according to Real Property Data.

Rai said his firm relied on legal title transfer data from the Land Title and Survey Authority of B.C. Upon a building’s completion and it receiving occupancy, units that haven’t closed after six months are considered standing inventory, he said.

Westbank disputed Real Property Data’s figures, saying that units described by the firm as unsold “likely include units under firm and binding contracts that have not yet closed to their respective purchasers — this is private information that is not publicly available.”

Westbank said its unsold inventory at The Butterfly is below 20 per cent. The developer didn’t provide an exact number of remaining unsold units but said the inventory is primarily made up of one- and two-bedroom homes starting at about $1 million.

“As with any market, homes at higher price points generally see slower absorption, as there are fewer buyers at those price points,” said Westbank, describing current market conditions as a “buyer’s market.”

“They (buyers) are being pragmatic, taking their time in their approach and offers, regardless of what they are looking for.”

Ledingham McAllister and Anthem Properties didn’t respond to requests for comment.

With files from Douglas Quan