North Vancouver real estate market: what September 2026 actually did

Updated 5 October 2026. This page tracks the North Vancouver real estate market, and West Vancouver’s, using the Greater Vancouver REALTORS® figures for September 2026, released on 2 October. I rewrite it in the first week of every month.

Monthly reports, each on its own dated page: September 2026

Prices per square foot: what North Shore houses sell for per square foot, by neighbourhood and street

If you are buying or selling on the North Shore, three numbers decide almost everything: how many homes sold, how many came to market, and what the benchmark price did. Everything below comes from the board’s own monthly statistics package, not from an estimate.

September 2026 at a glance

Area	Sales	vs Sep 2025	New listings	vs Sep 2025
North Vancouver	126	−20.3%	554	−7.7%
West Vancouver / Howe Sound	60	+17.6%	176	−36.0%
Metro Vancouver	1,717	−8.4%	5,852	−10.3%

Metro-wide, September sales came in 25 per cent below the ten-year seasonal average of 2,289. New listings were 5.7 per cent above their ten-year average of 5,537. Active inventory across the region sits at 16,394, down 4 per cent from a year ago but still 24.3 per cent above its ten-year average.

That combination, plenty of supply and weak demand, is why the sales-to-active listings ratio for the region fell to 10.9 per cent: 9.7 per cent for detached homes, 12.2 per cent for townhouses, 11.4 per cent for apartments. Under roughly 12 per cent is generally read as a buyer’s market, and the region as a whole is now below that line.

What a North Shore home costs right now

These are MLS® Home Price Index benchmark prices: the board’s estimate of a typical home of that type. It is a fairer read than an average sale price, because one $12 million sale cannot distort it.

North Vancouver

Property type	Benchmark price	1 month	1 year	5 years
Detached	$2,042,000	−2.2%	−6.2%	+0.2%
Townhouse	$1,230,400	−1.4%	−4.9%	+5.6%
Apartment	$769,000	−0.2%	−3.2%	+5.5%
All types	$1,290,400	−1.1%	−3.9%	+0.8%

West Vancouver

Property type	Benchmark price	1 month	1 year	5 years
Detached	$2,822,900	−0.9%	−9.9%	−11.3%
Apartment	$1,097,300	−2.2%	−5.7%	−7.9%
All types	$2,244,700	−1.1%	−7.4%	−15.8%

There is still no West Vancouver townhouse benchmark. Only four attached homes sold in West Vancouver / Howe Sound in September, too thin a sample for the index to publish, which is worth knowing in itself if you are trying to price one.

What the North Vancouver real estate market did in September

North Vancouver sales fell and listings came back. North Vancouver sold 126 homes in September, against 158 a year earlier, a drop of about a fifth. At the same time 554 homes came to market, almost double August’s 293. The autumn listing wave arrived, and buyers did not arrive with it.

Prices slipped across every North Vancouver segment. Detached fell 2.2 per cent in the month and townhouses 1.4 per cent, after both rose in August. Apartments, the weak spot last month, barely moved, down 0.2 per cent. Over a year, North Vancouver detached is now down 6.2 per cent, its sharpest annual decline of the four types.

West Vancouver is still repricing. Sales rose to 60 from 51 a year earlier, but the benchmark is down 7.4 per cent in a year and detached is down 9.9 per cent. Buyers are coming back to West Vancouver at the new price, not the old one. If you own there and are working from a 2022 number in your head, that is the gap.

Across the region, GVR’s chief economist Andrew Lis said the weakness in sales was “contained to the sizeable apartment segment”, while detached and attached sales “finished slightly up from last September”. North Vancouver followed the same pattern: 59 detached sales against 49 a year earlier, 25 attached against 29, and 42 apartments against 80. Almost all of North Vancouver’s drop in sales was apartments.

The ten-year picture, which almost nobody prints

Over ten years the North Vancouver benchmark is up 16.9 per cent. Over the same ten years West Vancouver is down 26.7 per cent.

Those are the board’s own index numbers, and they are not a typo. A typical West Vancouver home is worth materially less today than an equivalent home was a decade ago, while North Vancouver has ground upward. One bridge apart, the two sides of the North Shore are on different trajectories. It is the most useful thing to understand about the North Shore before you buy on either side of it.

Where mortgage rates sit

On 2 September 2026 the Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25 per cent. The Bank Rate is 2.50 per cent and the deposit rate 2.20 per cent.

The next scheduled announcement is 28 October 2026. Fixed mortgage rates move with bond yields between announcements, so a hold does not mean your quote stays still. Check a live rate, not this paragraph, on the day you need one.

What I am watching in October

Whether North Vancouver detached keeps falling. Down 2.2 per cent in one month is the sharpest move on the North Shore. One month is not a trend; two is.
Whether the September listings sell or sit. 554 new North Vancouver listings in one month is a lot of supply going into a slow market. If they sit, expect more price reductions before winter.
Whether West Vancouver sales hold at the new price level. Two stronger months in a row would suggest the repricing has found a floor.
The 28 October rate decision, and what fixed rates do in the weeks before it.

Before you rely on any of this

Call me, or call the source, before you act on a number on a web page, including this one. No summary of the North Vancouver real estate market can price your particular home. These figures describe a whole municipality in a single month; your street, your building and your price band can be doing something different. By the time you read this the market has moved on, and board statistics are also revised.

If you want the numbers for your actual block rather than your municipality, that is a phone call: (778) 903-7306.

How these numbers are defined

Sales and new listings are MLS® transactions reported by Greater Vancouver REALTORS® for the calendar month, summed across detached, attached and apartment. The year-over-year changes for North Vancouver and West Vancouver are my own arithmetic from the board’s September 2025 and September 2026 tables.
North Vancouver in the board’s tables is one reporting area covering both the City and the District of North Vancouver. North Vancouver is two separate municipalities and the board blends them into a single benchmark, so a North Vancouver figure here is not specific to either one. West Vancouver is a third, separate municipality.
West Vancouver sales and listings in the board’s tables mean West Vancouver / Howe Sound, so they include Lions Bay and other Howe Sound properties. Bowen Island is reported separately. The benchmark prices are for West Vancouver.
Benchmark price is the MLS® Home Price Index, a modelled price for a typical home of that type in that area. It is not an average sale price, and it is the more stable of the two.
Sales-to-active listings ratio is the month’s sales divided by active listings. Sustained readings below about 12 per cent are usually described as a buyer’s market, above about 20 per cent a seller’s.
Sources: Greater Vancouver REALTORS®, September 2026 market report, published 2 October 2026, and its statistics package; and the Bank of Canada policy announcement of 2 September 2026.

Thinking about buying or selling on the North Shore?

Leave your name and number and I will come back to you, usually the same day. Tell me the address if you have one and I will pull the sale history and the documents that matter before we talk. No charge, no obligation.

Prefer to talk now? Call or text 778-903-7306.