Metro Vancouver homebuyers finding ‘sweet spot’ in townhome units, new report says
The report comes at a time when there are very few buyers of new condos that are in the pipeline and the market is filled with court-ordered sales
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A new report has found that recent and prospective homebuyers overwhelmingly prefer to live in townhomes, value a gym over other amenities, and are likely to buy in areas they already know.
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The report, called Homes Of Tomorrow, was released Monday by Rennie Intelligence, which tracks demographic and economic indicators related to the real estate market.
Rennie commissioned the Angus Reid Group to survey and analyze lifestyle choices, preferences and daily habits of 1,400 renters, past buyers, and future buyers in Metro Vancouver, Greater Victoria and the Central Okanagan in an attempt “to bridge the gap between how people live today and how we build for tomorrow.”
The report comes at a time when there are very few buyers of new condos that are in the pipeline and the market is filled with court-ordered sales and projects that are on hold or completed with many unsold units.
The current number of completed and unsold condos will grow to 3,650 by the end of 2026, according to the report’s estimates.
While it used to be “build it and they will come,” buyers and renters now have strong preferences and “the benefit of being able to consider a larger slate of available inventory than in past years,” said the report by Elaine Cowley, Rennie’s senior product development manager, and Ryan Berlin, vice-president of intelligence and chief economist.
The report looked at lifestyle choices, including pet and car ownership, to habits such as cooking and working from home. It asked what spaces and amenities are most valued. It dug into geographic locations and home types and other motivations for buying.
The last such survey done by Rennie in 2023 included buyers who were investors, but this time around, there was an “exceptionally low participation rate among investors” and the survey mostly focused on buyers who were end-users — those who had either bought a home in the last three years or who intend to buy one in three years — and renters who represented nearly half of the 1,400 interviewees.
The survey mostly drew respondents who are couples with or without children living at home. Overall, just over a third of buyer households have children under 18 living at home, while a smaller share have adult children. For households with children under 18, the majority have one child, and only two per cent reported having three children or more at home.
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Nearly half of buyers have at least one pet, an increase from 43 per cent in 2023 to 47 per cent in 2025. Nearly all homeowners had one car and close to half had multiple vehicles. Compared to 2023, homeowners are now more likely to have multiple vehicles, and while car ownership is lower within the City of Vancouver than in the Central Okanagan, there is overall high car ownership among buyers.
Over half of all end-users identified townhomes as their preferred choice, with the “sweet spot” being a three-bedroom family home, but there was also some “notable appetite for more compact two-bedroom townhomes as well.”
“The demand for ground-oriented living remains a powerful force in the market, with over half of all end-user buyers identifying townhomes as their preferred choice,” said the report.
It explained that the appeal of a private front door isn’t just for those with large families, but that it also resonates with households with more modest space requirements.
The number of bedrooms is still an important factor for buyers of all ages, but buyers who are older than 55 prized outdoor space, while those under 34 years didn’t care as much about private outdoor space.
The survey listed 30 different options for amenities and, by a wide margin, a gym was the No. 1 choice for most respondents, followed by parcel lockers for Amazon deliveries, and a pool. With online shopping growing in popularity, lockers that allow for secure and convenient deliveries moved from being in seventh place in 2023 to one of the top three in 2025.
The report also found that 62 per cent of buyers are considering homes within their current municipality, with almost half searching there only. About 55 per cent of past buyers did end up buying within their current municipality, while 45 per cent purchased in a different one. It shows that while buyers may start with a range of options, their initial mindset is a strong indication of where they are likely to land.
The “affordability paradox” is the clearest challenge for developers who face rising costs to build and buyers who are more selective and value-conscious as their purchasing power has shrunk, said the report.
“Our markets are increasingly driven by equity-rich, move-up buyers, while first-time buyers struggle to gain entry,” it said.
