2024 Commercial Market Forecast

There’s no sugar-coating it.

At the aggregate level, 2023 is likely to finish with transaction volumes among the lowest levels seen in over ten years across the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s (REBGV) regions.

The Bank of Canada’s aggressive monetary policy response to the most worrisome levels of inflation seen in over 40 years has had a pronounced dampening effect on commercial market activity.

But while transaction volumes have languished in 2023, our outlook for 2024 offers reasons to be optimistic.

Read our 2024 commercial real estate forecast to find out why.

Key highlights

Looking back at 2023: REBGV regions saw lower transaction volumes relative to previous years due to the aggressive tightening cycle unleashed by the Bank of Canada.
Optimistic outlook: Markets are currently pricing in over 100bps of cuts to the Bank of Canada’s policy rate in 2024, which should provide support to transaction volumes in the latter half of 2024.
Rebounds: With big policy shifts at the provincial and federal levels targeted towards increasing the supply of new homes, we expect a rebound in land deals later in 2024. Lower borrowing costs should also spur activity in the multi-family and office segments, as lower bond yields and low, or declining vacancy rates, make these asset classes more attractive than they were in 2023.

Note: This forecast covers REBGV regions only. Regular readers of our commercial statistics will notice that historical transaction volumes in this forecast document do not match those in our historical commercial statistics. This is due our historical statistics covering areas outside of REBGV regions.