Welcome to 2026 – I hope you had a restful and enjoyable holiday season, and are turning to the new year with optimism and some fun goals in mind. The magic of Whistler was on full display over the holidays with amazing snow conditions and all the fun festivities.
In Whistler, there was 36 sales in December which is just higher than the 5-year (2021-2025) sales average of 35 December sales. Of these sales, 33 went for under the asking price, 2 went for asking and 1 went for over asking.
In Squamish, there was 30 sales in December, which is aligned with the 5-year average of 30 December sales. Of these sales, 20 went for under the asking price, 5 went for the asking price, and 5 went for over the asking price.
The big real estate headline to start the year is that there were fewer sales in the Greater Vancouver area (which includes Squamish and Whistler) in 2025 than any year since 2005. See the stats package from the Greater Vancouver Realtors (GVR) below. This is a wild headline, especially considering how many more people and units exist in the GVR compared to 2005. The even wilder thing is how well prices are holding against this backdrop (see graph).
Earlier in 2025, the big headline was that total inventory in the Greater Vancouver area had reached historic levels when it surpassed the 17,000 listings mark. What hasn’t been reported is that inventory is already down to 11,000 units. With the relatively low number of sales in 2025, it begs the question how many of these listings cancelled off to wait for better selling conditions. As mentioned before, this has been a defining feature of this downturn – despite great expectations, there haven’t been nearly the level of distressed sellers as would-be buyers and fear-mongering headlines would like to see.
I see sellers refusing to budge on their prices for a few reasons: the widespread knowledge of how expensive it is to build nowadays, the acknowledgment that any new land to be opened to development in the future is going to be further from city/town centres and are likely to be smaller parcels, and the still-strong rental market. On the last point, there was a headline about how rental rates have gone down across the country, however this is less true in our local markets. In Squamish, rental prices have stabilized and perhaps pulled back a little bit from the high about two years ago. This is because Squamish has been effective at bringing on significant supply, with several purpose-built rental apartment complexes completing. When these buildings complete and dozens of units are offered to the market at the exact same moment, I’ve been watching closely how much this distorts the Squamish rental market and affects what landlords can rent their places for. This isn’t happening in Whistler – supply is not increasing quickly and I don’t anticipate this to change.
Lastly, Stilhavn held a company-wide meeting this week and brought in Trevor Koot, CEO of the BC Real Estate Association (BCREA), to discuss the association’s position on the Cowichan case decision. He talked about how much uncertainty/confusion this court decision is causing and some Vancouver agents spoke about how they’re being asked questions about this fairly regularly. I’m quite familiar with indigenous issues in Canada from my university degrees, prior career in mining, and my time working with the small west coast federal arm of Environment and Climate Change Canada, who specifically deals with the indigenous file. If you have questions about this topic, feel free to reach out to me directly and I can help you make some sense of what’s happening. The bottom line is that private property is treated separately and is unlikely to be affected, and it will be publicly held municipal, provincial, and federal lands that will continue to be affected by the legal precedent building on indigenous land claims.
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Lindsay
604-612-1484
lindsay@lindsaymcivorrealestate.com
Follow me on Instagram @squamish_whistler_real_estate