Countering Condo Buyout Critics, Carney and Eby Offer More Details

British Columbia Premier David Eby blamed Prime Minister Mark Carney for prematurely announcing a joint plan to buy 2,200 empty condos before the details were ready but insisted the program will help people get into affordable homes without being a bail-out for developers.

“On this condo proposal, the federal government was enthusiastic about us announcing this before all the details were out,” Eby told reporters Thursday. “In the absence of the details the plot has been lost a little bit here.”

The plot got rolling when the program was mentioned in a housing announcement Carney and Eby made June 18 in Vancouver.

The federal government’s press release said buying condos would be “one of the fastest and most efficient ways to increase housing supply,” but provided little detail other than to say that “Together, through Build Canada Homes and BC Housing, we will leverage innovative financing tools to convert more than 2,200 vacant condo units in priority growth areas into affordable homes.”

In his remarks to reporters that day, Carney did little to clarify what was planned and gave the impression the program would largely be an aid to developers who had built more condos than they can sell.

There are around 2,500 finished units in Metro Vancouver alone that have no buyers and are sitting vacant, he said. “With higher interest rates, weaker investment demand, developers are stuck,” he said. “They don't want to sell at a loss, but they can't afford to hold those empty units indefinitely.”

The problem isn’t just homes sitting idle, but what they mean for people considering building more units, Carney added, saying they “unsettle lenders and investors, create a housing market that in effect feels frozen.”

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has reported that there were 4,376 completed and unabsorbed condo apartments in the Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area in May 2026, which was up significantly from 2,488 a year earlier.

The glut has been associated with a drop in prices, with a recent report from Toronto-Dominion Bank predicting that by the end of 2026 condos in Vancouver may be 15 per cent cheaper than they were in 2023.

The two levels of government would work together to get people into those homes, Carney said. “Condos that have been built that are unoccupied that are going to sit there potentially for another couple of years, we're going to go use the right financing mechanisms, convert those into affordable housing so people can move in and use that.”

But asked by a reporter for more detail, Carney said experts are working on the program and details would follow in the fall. “Effectively though,” he said, “what you're doing is buying them at a price, spreading out the financing because you can do that, the financing of the underlying condo at our financing rate, but targeting at a level that is affordable. It is a way to clear off on the books of this overhang.”

Nor could the B.C. government provide details of what its role would be or what the program would cost.

“Discussions are underway between the province, federal government and stakeholders on how we can best leverage innovative funding mechanisms to deliver a pathway for those who face barriers to home ownership currently,” a spokesperson for the B.C. ministry of housing and municipal affairs said June 19 in response to questions from The Tyee. “We will have more to say about this as details are finalized.”

To the opposition parties, it sounded like the governments were getting ready to bail-out property developers.

“We need assurances this fall that public funds won't simply subsidize developer profits, that homebuyers won't face price gouging, and that deeply affordable and social housing will be created and protected,” said BC Green Party MLA Rob Botterell who represents Saanich North and the Islands.

The BC Conservatives said, “Their plan involves spending millions of dollars bailing out developers after a risky investment and will not meaningfully address the housing crisis.”

“If prices are set too high for condo units to be sold,” a press release from the party quoted housing critic Linda Hepner saying, “market forces will cause the prices to lower until people can afford them. But if developers know that the government will simply bail them out if the condos sit vacant long enough, they will never drop their prices, making the housing crisis even worse.”

Federally, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre reportedly slammed the program as a “bailout” and said Carney “seems to have a bailout for anyone who's part of the Liberal club of power brokers.”

Leaders try again to explain

On Thursday, in separate media availabilities, both Carney and Eby acknowledged they had done a poor job explaining what they have in mind.

Carney told reporters it will cost around $1.45 billion to convert the units, with the federal government providing 10 per cent of that amount.

Speaking later in the day, Eby said B.C. will contribute the same amount as the federal government, bringing the total spending from both governments to just under $300 million. The rest of the money for the program will come from financing, he said.

“These are the details that we’re currently working on in the program,” Eby said. “The federal government wanted us to come out early when the Prime Minister was in town to share the details. I think in hindsight we should have waited and made sure all the details were available.”

Eby also provided more detail on what the government is and isn’t trying to do.

“If you are a condo developer who took a bet on the high end of the market and you’re facing significant potential loss of profits, what we are proposing will not assist you,” Eby said, adding that making housing more affordable for people includes “inevitable corrections in the market” where prices drop.

“What we see as an opportunity right now is the chance to buy products below the cost of construction, below what the government can build them for, and make them available through a rent-to-own program for British Columbians,” he said.

Spending $1.45 billion on 2,200 condos works out to about $660,000 per unit, though the purchase price would need to be lower than that to allow for financing and other costs.

The numbers don’t work in Vancouver itself, Eby continued, but they do work in places like Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island and the Okanagan.

“It creates the opportunity for people to get into housing that wouldn’t otherwise, it doesn’t provide a cent of benefit to developers who are in over their head,” he said. “In fact we expect developers to be taking losses on many of these initiatives and ultimately it’s just another way for us to give people a chance to get into housing that otherwise wouldn’t have had the chance.”

The government will be able to make the units available at affordable rates to people who are renting and who do not have enough money for a downpayment, Eby said.

Ryan Berlin, chief economist and vice-president of intelligence at the Vancouver real estate firm rennie, said the governments’ plan remains confusing and it was a mistake for them to announce it with so few details.

“There are so many questions because so few answers have been given,” he said.

Developers were not asking for governments to buy their unsold condos and there are very few that are likely to be available at below the cost of construction, Berlin said. “I don’t think its going to come to fruition ... I don’t think this plan can be successful as it’s been conceived. I don’t think it’s been fully conceived as an idea.”

Turn the condos in co-ops or social housing: policy expert

Yuly Chan, a sociologist doing a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University on comparative housing policy, said it’s a step in the right direction for the government to take advantage of the growing number of unsold units in the condo market.

“It’s either going to be the government buying them at depressed prices or it’s going to be institutional investors or hedge funds or real estate trusts that will buy them up and wait for the condo to rebound and sell them at market prices,” said Chan, who grew up in Vancouver and has degrees from Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto.

An even better plan would be to turn the units into co-operatives or other social housing that would remain affordable for the long term, added Chan, who has lived as a renter in both Vancouver and Toronto.

“I do have concerns about the proposal to basically sell these units through a rent-to-own program,” she said. “Later on down the road when the market rebounds these people can sell them at market prices and turn a profit from that, so there are no guarantees that these units will remain affordable under a rent-to-own program.”

The government is missing an opportunity to instead create a more robust social housing policy at a time when Canadians are really struggling with affordable housing, she said.

Eby said the province will also complete 3,000 units of social housing this year, but the condo conversion program is aimed at people who could buy a home with a little help. “At some point I do think we need to make sure that there’s opportunities for young people who aren’t going to qualify for social housing to be able to get into the housing market. That’s what this moment provides us with the opportunity to do.”

The government doesn’t want to let the opportunity go to waste, he said. “If we crunch the numbers and bring it forward and people don’t like it, then that’s fine, but I would like the opportunity to bring forward the program, have the housing minister present it.”