A $1.45-billion plan to buy up to 2,200 unsold condos in British Columbia is being panned as a bailout despite government arguments it will create affordable housing.

The plan was announced in June in an unusual way — it was only a line with few details in a broader set of announcements from the federal and BC governments on their continuing partnerships.

“It’s like they made a mistake, that they shouldn’t have announced it when they did,” Marc Lee, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told Real Estate Magazine. “Both sides, federally and provincially, seemed to be scrambling to come up with what it actually was that they were going to do.”

It was a week later that both Prime Minister Mark Carney and BC Premier David Eby clarified the program — that the federal and provincial governments would put in $150 million each. That means $300 million of taxpayers’ money would go toward buying the condos, and Eby said the rest would be covered by financing.

Essentially, it is the same as Ontario’s plan to buy 2,200 condos in that province, with the provincial government contributing $300 million and the rest footed by investors, led by private investment firm High Art Capital. REM spoke to High Art Capital in June, and it said it already has more than $1 billion from investors and had to cap the fund.

The plan for BC comes as the province has about 5,849 completed and unabsorbed condos as of May 2026, of which 4,376 are in Metro Vancouver, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Eby said the province’s program would focus outside of Vancouver, given the higher prices in that market.

The idea is to buy the condos in bulk to get a better price on them and then put them into a rent-to-own program, which essentially allows buyers to slowly buy the condo without a down payment.

A Floor Under Falling Prices

But buying more than a third of the unsold condo inventory in the province would be significant market interference that could affect prices, experts say.

“It puts a floor on the prices of those condos, because (prices) are dropping right now and would continue to drop in the absence of this program,” Lee said. “It has all the marks of a bailout.”

Lee also questioned how much truly affordable housing the program could create. Even if units are purchased at a discount, they could still be over $600,000, which would only be affordable to a small portion of BC’s population. He said it is unclear how much of a discount the governments could get on the unsold housing, and developers will likely still want to break even; otherwise, they could just hold onto the inventory until they find buyers.

“To try to pull this off, (the governments are) walking this real knife edge,” Lee said. “They’re only going to be able to deliver whatever housing they’re able to buy, at whatever affordability level, to this very small number of households. It’s going to be tricky for them if they try to do it.”

“Not Designed to Help The Average Joe”

Vancouver Realtor Steve Saretsky told REM that he thinks the program isn’t really about creating affordable housing, but is an excuse to bail out both developers and banks.

He thinks the governments are getting “tapped on the shoulder” by either the banks or the developers, even though Carney and Eby have said no developers asked for it.

“I don’t think that this program is really designed to help the average Joe,” Saretsky said. “The average Joe is probably at the bottom of the pecking order in terms of who they’re trying to get this to help.”

He said the banks are “dramatically exposed” given their backing of developers, amid concern developers can’t pay back their loans due to trouble selling their supply.

Saretsky pointed out that the bulk of construction financing in the Fraser Valley and the BC Interior is done by credit unions, and the BC government backs 100% of those deposits, rather than the standard $100,000. That could give the provincial government motivation to get the units sold and avoid a financial crisis.

Saretsky also said real estate has been one of the prime economic drivers in BC for the last 15 to 20 years, so when sales are low, that’s a problem for the whole province, with “huge knock-on effects.”

He said “putting a floor under the housing market” could help bring investors back in, which could boost pre-sales and get condos built. It could also give developers the sense that they’re “too big to fail,” which could give them the confidence to keep building. But overall, he doesn’t think the program will have too big an impact on the market, though it could keep prices high, as Lee said.

Saretsky is critical of the rent-to-own program, saying it could keep buyers stuck paying rent indefinitely rather than becoming homeowners, as they may still not be able to afford a mortgage down the road.

“The fact that (rent-to-own) is so hard to even explain in really simple, layman’s terms is all the red flags that you need,” he said. “There’s a reason these programs haven’t really taken off in North America.”

Is BC’s Condo Rescue Plan A Housing Fix or A Bailout? by Eric Stober | Real Estate Magazine