Canada’s overheated housing market is correcting. It’s time for housing policy to start correcting with it.

In the past decade and more, housing prices in Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria and other Canadian cities have spiralled upward into unaffordability, crowding out many families.

Observers whose livelihoods have not depended on Canada’s real-estate boom have long said what is needed is a “soft landing” — in which prices go down, but not so drastically as to ruin those who bought in at ultra-elevated prices.

In January, the volume of home sales in both Vancouver and Toronto were at 25-year lows, according to analyst Steve Saretsky BC Assessment shows values down in most Metro Vancouver neighbourhoods, by anywhere from one to 13%.

Meanwhile, Saretsky points out that, as Canada recently recorded its steepest population decline on record and growth was at a standstill in 2025, average apartment rents in Vancouver and Toronto are also more than 12% lower than two years ago.

Given the earthward direction, many in the real-estate industry are in high anxiety, fearing the bubble is bursting. They’re pleading with governments, in various ways, to come to their rescue.

But just as stock-market analysts speak of over-exuberant markets needing a healthy “correction,” it’s clear what is happening now in urban Canadian housing is an opportunity — for would-be buyers as well as governments.

Here are 10 Moves to Consider :

1. Buyers Could Take Advantage

“Interest rates have stabilized, and it’s definitely a buyer’s market,” says Vancouver realtor David Hutchinson. “Prospective buyers should think about seriously looking, doing research to see if the time is right for them.” Sellers, he said, have to prepare for not getting the price their neighbour did last year.

2. Keep Migration Rates Low

“Almost every day now you see someone in the real-estate industry claiming poverty due to the reduced immigration levels,” says Hutchinson.

While many developers want migration levels boosted, and governments to again welcome foreign capital into the market, Hutchinson said “previous population growth was so extreme, and resulted in so many abuses, that I don’t know if the public is conducive to increasing immigration all over again. It seems we’re still reeling.”

Many observers, including a coalition of 28 BC housing experts, are urging the federal government to maintain its gradual easing of international migration, which has been most responsible for population growth and related housing demand.

3. Forget Supply, Supply, Supply

The correction is a time to recognize the failure of governments’ “market-driven, investor-fuelled, supply, supply, supply policy of the past 30 years,” said UBC geography professor emeritus David Ley, author of Housing Booms in Gateway Cities.

“It has led to the most unaffordable housing market in North America, with Vancouver incomes far below purchase prices and market rents.” Governments’ fixation on drastic upzoning for more dwellings has not proved a solution, Ley said. It has mostly inflated the profits of landowners.

4. Don’t Bail Out Developers

Many BC cities, and the provincial government, are constantly creating more ways to make it easier, cheaper and faster for anxious developers to construct housing units and densify neighbourhoods. Politicians are requiring developers to provide fewer amenities, such as parks and community centres, while increasingly expecting taxpayers to shoulder costs for the extra infrastructure.

In contrast, Ley said, “Public funds should not be allocated to protect private developers who have made poor market decisions. Real estate is a cyclical industry and companies that have not made provision for downturns should harvest what they have sown.”

5. Build More Human-Scale Housing

“So much of what is being proposed is awful design that will be hard to rent or sell,” says Vancouver architect Brian Palmquist, referring especially to the region’s torrent of new apartment towers with small units, which aren’t particularly affordable or livable, especially for families.

“We should pursue a model of human-scale development,” said Ley, which respects the integrity of neighbourhoods and limits towers to select major transit nodes. “Secondary suites, lane houses and four-plexes should be the prevalent modes of development in most neighbourhoods.”

Instead of Metro Vancouver’s “love affair” with environmentally costly glass-and-concrete towers, UBC professor emeritus Patrick Condon recommends pivoting to “a pattern of four-to-eight-storey mid-rise structures made of wood or mass timber and enclosing green courtyards, as perfected in European cities like Berlin or Barcelona.”

6. Support Non-Market Housing

This correction is making private land less expensive for forms of non-market housing, say experts. “Let’s use this retrenchment to purchase land at fire-sale prices,” said Condon, author of Broken City.

“As distress sales rise, land values fall more rapidly than home prices. Governments and non-profits can act decisively. Acquire depreciated lots for a public land bank that is immune to land speculators.” Condon especially advocates “resident-owned co-operatives.”

7. Don’t Demolish Existing Rentals

“We should as a top priority preserve existing affordable rental units,” said Ley. Experts join him in lamenting how dozens of three-storey rental blocks built in the 1970s, for instance, are slated for destruction in Vancouver.

8. Consult with The Public Again

Top-down planning by the province and many BC city halls, including by prohibiting in-person public hearings, has eroded democratic engagement. “Neighbourhood planning should be brought back and strengthened,” said Palmquist.

9. Build More Surface Transport Systems

Costly transit megaprojects, like SkyTrains, “primarily serve narrow corridors and largely benefit landowners along their routes,” says Condon. “In a post-correction era,” he recommends building more surface transport systems, like light rail and dedicated bus and bike lanes. “They can move massive amounts of people at a fraction of the cost of subways.”

10. Rethink Draconian Upzoning Schemes

The province of BC should reform the sweeping upzoning it has mandated for virtually all cities and towns, say experts. Specifically, in regard to Vancouver, specialists call for a pause of the massive Broadway and Cambie plans, the Jericho Lands project, the proposed development of 25 future “villages” and especially the vast pre-zoning that’s coming down the pike through the impending “official community plan.”

10 Ways to Take Advantage of Canada’s Housing “Correction” by Douglas Todd | Vancouver Sun