Whether you’re buying your first home, selling a property, or simply keeping an eye on the market, real estate is a major decision. With the right information and preparation, the process can feel much more manageable.

Start With Your Goals

Every real estate journey is different. Before making a move, take some time to consider what matters most to you.

Are you looking for more space? Hoping to downsize? Interested in investing? Or perhaps you’re simply curious about what your current property may be worth?

Having a clear idea of your goals can help shape the decisions that follow.

Understanding the Market

Real estate markets can vary significantly from one neighbourhood to another. Factors such as inventory, buyer demand, interest rates, property condition, and location can all influence the buying and selling process.

Rather than relying solely on headlines or general market statistics, it’s helpful to look at the conditions affecting the specific area and type of property you’re interested in.

Preparation Makes a Difference

For buyers, getting financially prepared early can make the search much easier. Understanding your budget, financing options, and must-have features can help narrow your choices.

For sellers, presentation and pricing are important considerations. Small improvements, thoughtful staging, professional photography, and a well-planned marketing strategy can all help a property make a strong first impression.

Work With the Right Guidance

Real estate involves a lot of moving pieces, from negotiations and paperwork to inspections, financing, and closing. Having a knowledgeable professional by your side can help you understand your options and navigate the process with greater confidence.

The goal isn’t simply to make a transaction. It’s to make informed decisions that fit your circumstances and long-term plans.

Thinking About Your Next Move?

Whether you’re considering buying, selling, or simply want to understand what’s happening in the local market, now is a great time to start gathering information.

If you have questions about your neighbourhood, your property’s potential value, or what the current market could mean for your plans, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to have a conversation and help you explore your options.

If you have been watching the Bank of Canada, September looked like a quiet month. The Bank held its policy rate at 2.25 per cent on September 2, the seventh straight decision with no change.

Then, about a week and a half later, several major lenders raised their fixed mortgage rates.

I get asked about this every time it happens, so let me explain what is actually going on, because it is not a contradiction. It just means most people are watching the wrong number.

Fixed and variable rates answer to two different bosses

The Bank of Canada sets the overnight rate. That rate drives prime, and prime drives variable mortgages. When the Bank holds, a variable-rate holder's payment generally sits still.

Fixed mortgage rates do not come from the Bank of Canada at all. They follow Government of Canada bond yields, and for a five-year fixed mortgage, the five-year bond yield is the one that matters. Those yields are set by bond investors, every day, all over the world. The Bank's announcement is one input among many, and often not the loudest one.

So you can have a week where the Bank does nothing and fixed rates climb anyway. That is exactly what happened.

What actually moved

In the week leading up to September 11, the five-year Government of Canada bond yield rose by roughly a quarter of a percentage point. Lenders followed. Canadian Mortgage Trends reported that several major banks pushed their fixed rates up by 10 to 20 basis points, and that some lenders quietly pulled discretionary discounts worth as much as 40 basis points, which stings more than the posted increase suggests.

For context: on September 3, the best available five-year fixed sat around 4.24 per cent, with the best five-year variable near 3.55 per cent. After the mid-September increases, the gap between fixed and variable widened to roughly a full percentage point on some products.

This is also not a one-week story. The five-year bond yield has climbed about half a percentage point over the past two years, from 2.77 per cent to around 3.30 per cent, even while the Bank of Canada was cutting.

What the Bank actually said

The statement itself is worth reading, because the tone changed.

The Bank pointed to new US tariffs and Canadian counter-measures following the breakdown of trade talks, and said these raise costs for some businesses and could feed into consumer prices over time. It noted that inflation has been hovering around 3 per cent, mostly on gasoline, while core measures stayed close to 2 per cent in July. The line that caught my eye: upside risks to the Bank's inflation forecast have increased.

Read plainly, the next move is at least as likely to be up as down. That is a shift from a year ago, and the bond market heard it.

What this means here in the Fraser Valley

Locally, August gave us 941 sales, down 14 per cent from July but up about 1 per cent from a year ago. Active listings finished at 9,787, which is 33 per cent above the ten-year average, and the sales-to-active ratio sat at 10 per cent. That is buyer's market territory. The composite benchmark price is $869,900, down 7 per cent year over year, and the board's interim CEO noted prices are now as much as 15 per cent lower than three years ago.

So the picture is mixed. Borrowing costs on the fixed side are creeping up, which trims buying power. At the same time, there is more inventory and softer pricing than we have seen in years, which gives buyers room to negotiate on price, on terms, and on timing.

What these numbers do not tell you

Being honest about the limits here matters more than sounding confident.

The rates above are the best advertised offers. What you qualify for depends on your down payment, income, the property and the lender. Treat them as direction, not a quote.

A quarter-point move in bond yields over one week tells you nothing reliable about the next six months. If tariff pressure fades or the economy stalls, yields can fall back just as quickly as they rose.

And the benchmark price is a composite. It is not your house. A well-prepared home in the right pocket of Langley or Cloverdale can behave nothing like the average.

The next Bank of Canada decision is October 28. Nobody knows what it will be, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

If you are renewing in the next year, or weighing fixed against variable on a purchase, this is worth working through against your own numbers, ideally with a good mortgage broker in the room. Get in touch and let me know where you are at.

Sources

• Bank of Canada, "Bank of Canada maintains the policy rate at 2¼%," September 2, 2026 https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2026/09/fad-press-release-2026-09-02/

• Money.ca, "Bank of Canada holds rate at 2.25% for 7th straight decision," September 2026 https://money.ca/news/economy/bank-of-canada-interest-rate-hold-september-2026

• TD Stories, "The Bank of Canada holds its interest rate on September 2," September 2026 https://stories.td.com/ca/en/article/bank-of-canada-interest-rate-september-2026

• Canadian Mortgage Trends, "Bond yield surge pushes fixed mortgage rates higher across Canada," September 12, 2026 https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2026/09/bond-yield-surge-pushes-fixed-mortgage-rates-higher-across-canada/

• Mortgages for Less, "Why Are Canadian Fixed Mortgage Rates Rising While the Bank of Canada Is on Hold?," September 2026 https://mortgagesforless.ca/blog/2026-09/canadian-fixed-mortgage-rates-rising-boc-on-hold/

• Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, "Fraser Valley sellers feel the squeeze as buyers take their time," September 2, 2026 https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/09/02/3355199/0/en/fraser-valley-sellers-feel-the-squeeze-as-buyers-take-their-time.html

Garry Voigt, Royal LePage Wolstencroft Realty | Langley, BC | August 2026

There is a story people tell about Vancouver real estate. Foreign money drove prices up, governments stepped in, and the problem was dealt with. It is a tidy story, and most of the people repeating it have the timeline wrong.

With Canada's federal foreign buyer ban currently set to expire on January 1, 2027, it is worth getting the facts straight, because what happens next matters less here than most people assume.

The number was real, and it peaked in 2016

Before British Columbia introduced its foreign buyers tax in August 2016, foreign nationals accounted for 13.2 per cent of single-family home purchases in Metro Vancouver. That figure comes from researchers at UBC Sauder and SFU Beedie who worked with transaction-level data rather than estimates.

Provincial data from the same period backs it up. Between June 10 and August 31, 2016, foreign nationals were involved in 2,034 of roughly 22,000 Metro Vancouver transactions, about 9.3 per cent, and 11.5 per cent of the dollar value. Province-wide it was closer to 6 per cent of transactions and 8.8 per cent of value.

So the concern that drove the policy was not imaginary. In the segment where it concentrated, detached homes in Metro Vancouver, roughly one in eight buyers was a foreign national.

What happened when BC acted

The province brought in a 15 per cent additional property transfer tax on August 2, 2016, later raised to 20 per cent in February 2018.

The response was immediate. In the month following the tax, only 60 transactions in Metro Vancouver involved foreign nationals, totalling $46.9 million, which was under 1 per cent of transactions in that window. Within three months, the 13.2 per cent share of single-family purchases had fallen to 1.7 per cent.

The key point: foreign buying in Metro Vancouver did not slow gradually. It stopped almost immediately, in 2016, six and a half years before Ottawa's ban existed.

The federal ban arrived after the work was done

The Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act took effect on January 1, 2023. By that point foreign buyers were running at roughly 1 per cent of BC sales.

The ban was aimed at a problem this province had already priced out of its market. That is why you will read credible analysis saying it had little measurable effect on prices. It is not that foreign capital never mattered here. It is that BC had already dealt with it, and the federal measure arrived to find the room mostly empty.

What the tax achieved, and what it did not

The UBC and SFU research found that in the months around the tax, prices fell about 6 per cent further in neighbourhoods where foreign buyers had been most concentrated, compared with neighbourhoods where they had not. That is a real, measurable effect.

Two things worth knowing about it. First, condominiums and townhomes showed no comparable decline, likely because of different supply conditions and the presale assignment market. Second, the lead researcher was blunt about the limits. Tsur Somerville of UBC Sauder said the price effect "wasn't large enough to solve Vancouver's affordability issues."

A 6 per cent adjustment in some neighbourhoods does not close the gap between local incomes and local housing costs. Supply does that, and supply moves slowly.

One distinction that trips people up

You will see two different kinds of statistics quoted in this conversation, and they measure different things.

Buyer share is the percentage of this year's transactions involving foreign buyers. That is the 13.2 per cent figure.

Ownership rate is the percentage of all existing homes owned by non-residents. Statistics Canada put that at 4.8 per cent for the Vancouver census metropolitan area in 2017, 4.2 per cent in 2018, and 4.3 per cent in 2019. For condominium apartments specifically it was 7.9 per cent in 2017; for detached houses, 3.2 per cent.

Both numbers are accurate. They are not interchangeable, and quoting one as though it were the other is the most common error in this debate.

What changes in January

Possibly nothing. As of early August 2026, the federal government has not announced whether it will extend the ban, replace it, or allow it to lapse. Anyone telling you they know what happens on January 1 is speculating.

One model under discussion, rather than a straight extension, is the approach Australia uses: permit foreign purchases of new construction and presale properties while keeping restrictions on established resale homes. The reasoning is that offshore capital then funds new housing supply instead of competing for the homes already standing. If Canada lands there, it would matter considerably more to developers than to a typical homeowner selling a townhouse in Willoughby.

Why this matters less in BC than elsewhere

BC's foreign buyer taxes are provincial legislation and are entirely separate from the federal ban. The 20 per cent Additional Property Transfer Tax in designated regions and the Speculation and Vacancy Tax both remain in force regardless of what Ottawa decides.

In this province, the federal ban was never the expensive obstacle. The tax was, and the tax is not going anywhere. If you are a seller wondering whether January brings a wave of offshore buyers back to the Fraser Valley, the honest answer based on the data is that it is unlikely, and not while the provincial taxes remain in place.

Provinces without their own foreign buyer taxes, Alberta being the clearest example, would see a far more meaningful change if the federal ban lapses.

Wondering what any of this means for your property or your plans? I am happy to walk you through the numbers for your specific situation. Reach me at 604-789-2140 or info@garryvoigt.com.

Sources

• Foreign buyer share of single-family purchases (13.2 per cent falling to 1.7 per cent) and the 6 per cent neighbourhood price effect: Tsur Somerville (UBC Sauder School of Business), Andrey Pavlov (SFU Beedie School of Business) and Jake Wetzel, "Foreign Buyer Taxes and Housing Affordability," Real Estate Economics. Summary at sauder.ubc.ca. Full paper at onlinelibrary.wiley.com.

• Provincial transaction data for June 10 to August 31, 2016, including the 9.3 per cent Metro Vancouver share and the post-tax figures: BC Ministry of Finance, "Updated residential real estate data," news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2016FIN0041-001774.

• Non-resident ownership rates for the Vancouver CMA (2017): Statistics Canada, "Non-resident Ownership of Residential Properties in Toronto and Vancouver: Initial data from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program," statcan.gc.ca.

• Non-resident ownership rates for 2018 and 2019: Statistics Canada, "Canadian Housing Statistics Program, 2019," statcan.gc.ca.

• Federal ban timing, scope and the current January 1, 2027 expiry: Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act, in force January 1, 2023, extended by two years on February 4, 2024. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, cmhc-schl.gc.ca.

• Analysis of the 2027 expiry, alternative policy models and market impact: Canadian Mortgage Professional, "Canada's foreign buyer ban is expiring, what comes next could reshape the market," mpamag.com.

• Provincial taxes remaining in force independently of the federal ban: Deeded, "Canada's Foreign Buyer Ban Ends January 1, 2027," deeded.ca.

This article is general information about the BC and Canadian housing market and is not legal, tax, or financial advice for any individual situation. Figures were verified as of August 2026.

When buying a home in BC, the roof is one of those things that can easily get overlooked. But with our rain, snow, and changing weather conditions, the type and condition of a roof can have a big impact on a home’s maintenance and long-term costs.

Here are a few common roofing systems you’ll come across in the Lower Mainland:

Asphalt Shingles

One of the most common roofing materials for detached homes. Asphalt shingles are relatively affordable, easy to maintain, and come in a variety of styles. Depending on the quality and installation, they can last for many years, but eventually will need replacement.

Single-Ply Roofing

Often seen on flatter or low-slope roofs, single-ply systems use a membrane such as TPO, PVC, or EPDM. They can provide good waterproofing and are commonly used on townhomes, condos, and some residential properties. Proper installation and drainage are especially important with these systems.

Hot Tar / Built-Up Roofing

Hot tar roofing is another system commonly associated with low-slope or flat roofs. It typically uses multiple layers of roofing materials combined with asphalt. These roofs can be durable, but maintenance and proper drainage are important, particularly in our wet climate.

The Bottom Line

The type of roof is only part of the equation. Age, installation quality, ventilation, drainage, maintenance, and the overall condition of the roof are all important factors to consider.

If you’re buying a home, don’t just ask “What type of roof is it?” — ask “How old is it, how has it been maintained, and when might it need replacement?”

A roof may not be the most exciting part of a home purchase, but it can be one of the most important. 🏡

When buying a home, it’s easy to get caught up looking for the “perfect” property. The perfect neighbourhood, perfect layout, perfect kitchen, perfect yard… but in reality, that home may not exist.

A great home is often about finding the right balance between location, price, condition, and your lifestyle. Sometimes a home needs a few updates. Sometimes the layout isn’t exactly what you imagined. And sometimes the best opportunity is a property that other buyers have overlooked.

The key is knowing what truly matters to you and what can be changed over time.

Whether you’re thinking about buying your first home, moving up, downsizing, or simply curious about what’s available, having a clear plan can make the process much easier.

The perfect home may be hard to find — but the right home is out there. 🏡

If you’re considering making a move, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to chat about the market and what might make sense for you.