Market activity for luxury homes is shifting away from Canada’s urban centres toward other provinces, a trend also being reflected locally as some Realtors see opportunity in the Fraser Valley and other secondary markets.

Smaller and mid-sized markets are experiencing increasing or stable conditions while the country’s largest and most expensive markets are seeing affluent buyers take a more measured approach, Re/Max Canada said in a June 17 report.

Re/Max looked at luxury home sales in major Canadian markets, with luxury defined as a $3 million price point and above in the Vancouver region. Re/Max said from Jan. 1 to April 30, there were 268 sales compared to 334 during the same period in 2025, a drop of 19.8%.

Elizabeth McQueen, broker with Re/Max Select Properties, noted that Greater Toronto saw a 16.9% drop but that other markets like Edmonton, Saskatoon and Ottawa saw significant increases, where luxury is attainable at lower price points.

“Luxury is decentralizing,” she said. “Luxury isn’t any longer defined by being in a specific major urban centre.”

In the Vancouver region, one franchise is expanding into the Fraser Valley where it sees appetite for rural, agricultural, equestrian and other big properties.

“One-acre properties, they are not making more of them. There’s a very finite number of those,” said Braden Reimer, license partner with Engel & Völkers, which opened a Langley office earlier this year, its first one in Fraser Valley.

Growth tends to expand out in that direction due to the ocean on one side, the United States below and the mountains above, he said.

The Fraser Valley offers larger homes or the capability of building them, and he’s seeing instances of two generations buying a home together.

“We see a lot of families doing stuff together, and that’s something you can’t really do in Vancouver just because there isn’t the space for it,” he said.

While “very, very few” properties over $3 million are currently moving, luxury buyers are less sensitive to current trends because they are all end users. Instead of timing the market, they are letting their lives dictate when to jump on something, Reimer said.

“They’ll buy it in a hot market or a cold one,” he said.

Headwinds include immigration curbs and market saturation hurting demand for agricultural properties; higher interest rates putting some mortgage-heavy people underwater; and greater economic sensitivity down the chain of move-up buyers, Reimer said.

“I don’t think it’s going to be scary high, but I think you’ll see actually some luxury properties getting foreclosed on [in] the next 12 months or so,” he said.

Back in the city, the soft market means some luxury condos downtown are selling at 2013 price points right now, said Re/Max’s McQueen.

Looking ahead, Vancouver could see selective improvement, particularly in detached luxury due to pent-up demand. But McQueen said high taxes and the federal foreign buyer ban are weighing on the market.

It’s bad news for not just well-heeled buyers but also the public as a whole, she said.

“I don’t know how much people recognize that a foreign buyer buying a $3-million property pays on closing $652,000 in [foreign-buyer and property-transfer] taxes. We’ve taken that out of the system,” McQueen said.

If half of the first quarter’s 268 luxury sales had been to foreign buyers, this would imply at least $87 million in lost revenue in just one quarter—more than what the B.C. speculation and vacancy tax collects annually.

“Who else is covering that?” she said.

Luxury Market “Decentralizing” in Canada and Metro Vancouver by Jami Makan | BIV