From Regulator to Buyer: Eby’s Condo Gamble
Carney holds the microphone, but B.C. carries the risk as governments move to absorb Vancouver’s unsold units.
When Mark Carney and David Eby stood together in Vancouver on June 18 to announce that their governments would buy more than 2,200 empty condos and turn them into affordable housing, the staging suggested a federal initiative with the province as a partner. The fine print, filled in a week later, tells a different story about who is actually carrying the bet.
On June 25, the Prime Minister put a figure on the plan for the first time. He called it a “potential” $1.45 billion, with Ottawa covering about 10 percent and British Columbia the remaining 90. In fiscal terms, that makes the condo conversion overwhelmingly Eby’s program. Carney supplies the podium and the federal brand. The money, and the risk, are in Victoria.
Spread across 2,200 units, $1.45 billion works out to roughly $660,000 a condo. That is not a modest discount in a market where a significant share of unsold units—particularly in Vancouver proper—are priced at or above $1 million. It is the entire premise of the policy. If governments can acquire distressed inventory at 30 to 40 percent below what builders hoped to fetch, the exercise looks like opportunistic buying in a soft market. If they cannot, the numbers and the politics turn against them quickly.
This is why ministers have grown careful with their language. The emphasis now falls on “bulk acquisition below market value,” timed to a weakening condo sector. The word “potential” hangs over the price tag. No transactions have been signed. For the moment the plan is less a policy than a negotiating posture dressed up as one.
The trouble for both leaders is that the same set of facts supports three competing readings, and all three are plausible.
The government’s version is about speed. Take homes that already exist, get people into them faster than new construction allows, and aim the benefit at a group affordability programs usually skip over: households that earn too much for subsidized housing and too little to buy them. The rent-to-own structure is central to that pitch: a path into ownership rather than permanent tenancy. For Eby, who is under steady pressure to show movement on affordability in housing, it offers occupied units on a short timeline. For Carney, who is still defining what federal housing policy looks like under his leadership, it offers the advantage of seeming practical rather than ideological.
The opposition’s version is simpler. Whether the critic is Pierre Poilievre in Ottawa or Emily Lowan with the BC Greens, the accusation is that the state is stepping in to absorb inventory risk that belongs to developers and their lenders. Buy the units anywhere near what builders wanted, and the public ends up covering private losses. On this reading, the program is not about supply or buyers at all, but about balance sheets—those of developers and, less visibly, those of banks that expanded their construction-loan books sharply on the way up.
The third reading is the hardest for economists to dismiss, and it is the one that should worry the government the most. Those 2,200 units are, by definition, surplus. Left on the market, they would push prices and rents down. Removing them with public money may help a chosen group of buyers while keeping prices higher for everyone outside the program. That is the uncomfortable logic of intervening in a downturn: relief for some can mean cushioning the very correction that would have helped many more.
For Eby, the plan does not sit in isolation, and that is where it gets politically awkward. The province is putting up roughly $1.3 billion for its share of the condo purchases, on top of the money it is committing to development-charge relief meant to keep future projects viable. It is doing so shortly after reallocating about $1.4 billion from its housing strategy and pausing the funding streams that build deeply affordable, nonprofit-run, subsidized homes, the kind municipalities cannot finance on their own.
The shift in emphasis is unmistakable: away from the lowest-income households, who need permanent subsidy, and toward moderate earners who can be carried over the ownership threshold with the right financial bridge. Christine Boyle, the provincial housing minister, has been notably frank that this is the point. The program is not built for the poorest households. It is built for those just below the line.
That may be defensible as policy. As politics, it is a wager. The municipalities, nonprofits, and advocates Eby relies on for cover on housing are not naturally aligned with a pivot that delivers filled condos and lower developer fees while leaving the deepest gaps untouched.
Carney’s problem is the mirror image. His financial stake is small by design; a 10 per cent share keeps Ottawa’s fiscal exposure low. It does nothing to lower the political exposure. This program will be remembered as a federal initiative and, therefore, as a test of federal judgment. His June 25 reset, conceding the program had been explained badly, then shifting the spotlight from developers to families, was an attempt to take that narrative back. Redefining the beneficiary to reclaim a story is a familiar move in Canadian housing politics. Whether it holds will depend on execution, not phrasing. Visible discounts and a credible rent-to-own pathway tilt the politics his way. Generous prices, or a program that stalls in negotiation, will lead to the bailout label sticking.
A week into the debate, it is clear that almost nothing has actually been decided. The size of the discount is unspecified. The working definition of “affordable” is unset. The mechanics of rent-to-own are vague. Even whether any deals will close remains uncertain. That is not unusual at the front end of a ten-year agreement, but it means the political reckoning arrives at implementation, not announcement. For now, the plan occupies an awkward middle ground: ambitious enough to draw attention, yet undefined enough to invite suspicion.
The larger point is what the program represents. This is the government acting not as a regulator or subsidizer but as a buyer and reseller, intervening in who gets housing and on what terms. It is a more intrusive role than either order of government usually takes, and it demands a precision neither has yet demonstrated. Success will not be measured by how many condos change hands. It will be whether the exercise widens access without holding up the prices a correction would otherwise bring down.
Get that right, and Eby and Carney will have a new tool to point to. Get it wrong, and they will have done something more familiar, spending a great deal of public money to move a problem around. Either way, Metro Vancouver’s empty condos have already been converted into something else: a test of political judgment that both men now own, in unequal measure.
References
Boyle, C. (2026, June 24). Interview on the Canada–B.C. condo conversion plan [Television interview]. CBC News.
Business in Vancouver. (2026, June 18). Carney and Eby announce $3.2B developer subsidy; plan to buy unsold B.C. condos. https://www.biv.com/news/carney-and-eby-announce-32b-developer-subsidy-plan-to-buy-unsold-bc-condos-12442807
Daily Hive Urbanized. (2026, June 23). Government condo plan could wipe out half of Metro Vancouver’s unsold supply. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/canada-bc-partnership-condo-conversion-metro-vancouver-supply-criticism
DeRosa, K. (2026, June 19). Critics blast government plan to ‘bail out’ sagging condo sector in B.C. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/critics-slam-government-plan-to-bail-out-sagging-condo-sector-9.7242851
Gupta, S. (2026, June 23). Empty condos may get second life as affordable housing in BC. Canada’s National Observer. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/06/23/news/affordable-housing-condos-bc
Logan, N. (2026, June 25). Mark Carney’s plan to bulk-buy unsold Vancouver condos might be a bailout, but it doesn’t have to be [Analysis]. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/carney-vancouver-condos-affordable-housing-bailout-9.7247279
Lopez Steven, B. (2026, June 21). Poilievre slams federal-B.C. plan to buy vacant condos, calling it a ‘bailout’ for developers. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-carney-eby-bc-condos-bailout-metro-vancouver-9.7243786
McElroy, J. (2026, June 23). Why local governments aren’t cheering on the provincial and federal ‘bailout’ of the housing sector [Analysis]. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-ottawa-housing-deal-municipal-analysis-9.7245322
Prime Minister of Canada. (2026, June 18). Canada and British Columbia forge new partnership to accelerate homebuilding, lower costs, and build new local infrastructure [News release]. https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/06/18/canada-and-british-columbia-forge-new-partnership-accelerate
Robertson, G. [@gregorrobertson]. (2026, June 24). Let’s talk about our plan to convert empty units in B.C. into affordable homes [Post]. X.
The Canadian Press. (2026, June 25). Carney says B.C. condo buyout proposal is about affordability, not bailouts. BNN Bloomberg. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/real-estate/2026/06/25/carney-says-bc-condo-buyout-proposal-is-about-affordability-not-bailouts/
wonderfully insightful, thanks!
Brilliant analysis of the politics and economics of this initiative, without the ideological finger-pointing that has been clouding everything else I’ve been reading about it. Thank you so much!