Victoria BC Construction Market 2026: What's Being Built and What Realtors & Developers Need to Know

The Victoria BC construction market in 2026 is not a simple story. On one page you read about a 64% year-over-year collapse in March housing starts. Turn the page and you find missing middle housing up 100% for the quarter, a $103 million RCMP detachment headed for shovels, and 597-unit mixed-use projects lighting up Shelbourne Street. Both stories are true, and if you’re selling, financing, or filming projects in Greater Victoria right now, you need to understand how they fit together.

We built Silent Story on construction sites — drone batteries cold in our hands, time-lapses running through framing, magic-hour close-ups of hardwood going down. The view from behind the lens has given us an unusually close read on where the market is actually moving in 2026, and this piece is that read. It’s written for the realtors, developers, and project marketers who are making calls this year on what to pitch, what to push, and what to wait out.

The headline numbers: Greater Victoria is still building, just differently

Let’s start with what CMHC is actually reporting for Q1 2026.

Year-to-date housing starts in Greater Victoria reached 692 new homes from January through March 2026 — a 12% increase over the 612 starts in the same period of 2025. That’s the number to put on the first slide of any investor deck this spring. Victoria is still outpacing last year.

The month-to-month picture is less friendly. March 2026 alone posted 132 starts, down 64% from 366 in March 2025 and off 13% from February. One bad month does not break a trend, but it does signal that the pipeline is thinner than the headline suggests, and the back half of 2026 is going to feel it.

The geographic split is where the story gets strategic. The westshore-plus-Saanich axis is absorbing roughly 73% of all new residential construction in the region. If you’re a realtor and your listing inventory is still weighted toward Oak Bay and Sidney, you’re fishing a smaller pond than you were twelve months ago. If you’re a developer making land-acquisition decisions, the data is screaming that the growth corridor has moved north and west.

The missing middle moment is not coming — it’s already here

The most interesting structural shift in Victoria’s 2026 construction market is the one the Victoria Residential Builders Association has been sounding the alarm on for two years: missing middle housing — duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and townhomes — is up 100% year-over-year in Q1 2026.

The breakdown of Q1 housing starts by form is telling: 55 single-family homes, 140 row/townhome/duplex units, and 497 apartment/condo units. The row-townhome-duplex category doubling in a single year is not market noise. It’s the direct downstream effect of provincial Bill 44, which forced BC municipalities to rezone to allow gentle density in what used to be exclusively single-family zones.

”For realtors, that means a growing share of new inventory will hit the market as sub-$1M fourplex units and duplex halves in established neighbourhoods. These are not presale-tower transactions. They need local storytelling.”

For developers, the fourplex play is already oversubscribed with small builders chasing lots that pencil. The margin opportunity in 2026 isn’t being first — it’s being the one with a branded, repeatable product and marketing that actually sells units before completion.

Major projects anchoring the 2026 pipeline

The aggregate data matters, but deals get done on named projects. Here are the Greater Victoria developments we’re tracking most closely in 2026, and why each one matters for the professionals reading this.

University Heights Shopping Centre redevelopment (Saanich, Greystar)

597 units · 120,000 sf commercial · Late 2026 completion

A multi-building mixed-use delivery at 3956 Shelbourne Street with a grocery anchor, retail, dining, medical services, childcare, and a transit hub. One building is already occupied; remaining phases are advancing toward late-2026 completion. Greystar is bringing a master-planned neighbourhood online inside an established Saanich corridor. Realtors working north of Mount Tolmie should be building a Shelbourne story now.

Oak & Stone (Saanich, Abstract Developments)

87 condo units · 6 storeys · 50%+ complete

A six-storey mixed-use at 3226 Shelbourne delivering 87 condominium units over ground-floor retail including a coffee shop, with two levels of underground parking and a full studio-to-two-bedroom mix. Exterior is complete; interior finishing and landscaping are underway. Abstract Developments is one of the most consistent local shops — their presale pace is a reliable tell on the broader condo market.

Chown Place (Burnside Gorge)

$50M+ · 77 new homes · Affordable housing

68 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments plus nine three-bedroom townhomes, with an amenity building and communal green space. A meaningful affordability play in a neighbourhood that’s been quietly transforming for five years.

Chard’s Douglas & Caledonia project (Downtown)

516 units · Condo-to-rental conversion

Originally planned as condos, now converting to 516 units of market rental and supportive housing. This is the single clearest case study of 2026’s biggest trend: developers walking condo inventory into the rental pool because the presale math no longer works.

Harris Green Village (Downtown)

1,500 units · Downtown redevelopment

A rental-led redevelopment remaking two full blocks of downtown Victoria. Watch this as the bellwether for downtown’s long-term trajectory.

West Shore RCMP detachment (Langford)

$87.5M · 5 storeys · Institutional

A replacement for the existing 1960s building at 698 Atkins Ave, pending final approvals from Langford, Colwood, and View Royal on a potential $103M CRD loan. If approved, demolition could begin as early as May 2026 with substantial completion by August 2029.

Tiller + Grace Victoria & Opal Victoria (luxury tier)

48-unit seniors · Luxury segment

Tiller + Grace is poised to complete in 2026; Opal is a 48-unit luxury seniors condominium with construction starting in the second half of the year for a ~2028 delivery.

Condos are stalling, rentals are rising — and this changes your pitch

The Victoria condo market is in a visible cooldown. Condo sales declined roughly 36% year-over-year in early 2026, presales have stalled, and developers across the region are either postponing, cancelling, or converting projects to rental.

Three forces are driving this at once:

1. Buyer math. Investors who bought presales in the 2022–2024 window are finding rents insufficient to cover mortgage payments at current rates. New investor demand is thin.
2. Short-term rental restrictions. Provincial rules have removed a chunk of the investor thesis for condo ownership, pushing product into long-term rental.
3. Government incentives for rental supply. BC Housing and CMHC have opened generous loans and tax breaks for rental developments, tilting the pro forma math toward purpose-built rental over strata.

The net effect: Greater Victoria rental prices are dropping roughly 5% as new supply comes online, which is rare relief for tenants but a real headwind for anyone whose revenue model depends on rent escalation.

The cost-and-labour reality behind every project

Nothing about 2026 construction is cheap. BC construction material costs are running at 4% year-over-year inflation — double the Bank of Canada’s target. Labour cost escalation continues, and the province has 7,310 unfilled construction jobs, with particularly sharp shortages in skilled trades.

Layer on top of that the regulatory step-change: as of March 10, 2025, all new building permit applications in BC must comply with the 2024 BC Building Code, and the City of Victoria requires Emissions Level 4 of the Zero Carbon Step Code — the highest level — for all new buildings. That means heat pumps instead of gas furnaces, electric water heating, and a roughly 75% emissions reduction versus the average recent build.

What realtors and developers should do with this picture

Reading the whole landscape together, three practical moves stand out for 2026.

One: reallocate time toward Saanich, Langford, and Colwood. That’s where 73% of the new housing is being built. Inventory follows construction with a lag — the resale opportunity follows it with a longer lag. Be early.

Two: build a missing-middle specialty. Fourplexes and townhomes are the fastest-growing product category in the region, they’re dispersed across established neighbourhoods, and they’re marketed one at a time.

Three: invest in content and documentation now, while the market is softer. The project that starts in May and finishes in May 2027 will market itself with whatever footage was captured during the build. Softer sales momentum today is the best window to bake proper aerial progress, time-lapse, and completion-film assets into the project budget.

What we’re watching for the rest of 2026

A few signals we’re actively tracking, and we’ll update this post quarterly:

• Whether April and May housing starts rebound from the weak March print.
• Final approvals on the West Shore RCMP loan.
• Further condo-to-rental conversions among projects currently in presale.
• The first full year of missing middle data.
• How the 2024 BC Building Code’s Zero Carbon requirements affect build costs.

Sources

• Victoria Residential Builders Association — Missing Middle Housing Up 100%
• CMHC — Monthly Housing Starts and Construction Data
• CMHC Housing Market Outlook 2026
• Business Examiner — Yellow Sheet South Vancouver Island Building Briefs, April 21 2026
• City of Victoria — Low Carbon New Buildings
• Province of BC — Zero Carbon Step Code
• Citified.ca — Victoria’s new-build real estate resource