Stand at the corner of Broadway and Cambie on a weekday morning and the skyline tells an incomplete story. The Canada Line rumbles beneath your feet, the new St. Paul's Hospital campus rises to the northeast, and the Broadway-City Hall station entrance gleams with the promise of a denser, more connected city. But look east and west along the corridor, and what you see is mostly surface parking lots, low-rise commercial strips, and vacant storefronts—land that the City of Vancouver has already rezoned for towers of up to 20 storeys, sitting quietly, waiting.

That gap between what the Broadway Plan permits and what is actually being built is becoming one of the most consequential questions in Metro Vancouver's housing supply story. The plan—approved by Vancouver City Council in 2022 and covering roughly 50 blocks along the Broadway Corridor between Clark Drive and Vine Street—represents one of the most ambitious transit-oriented upzoning exercises in Canadian municipal history. It was designed to deliver tens of thousands of new homes over 30 years, clustered around the Broadway Subway extension, currently under construction and expected to open in 2027. The first wave of rezoned sites should, by now, be moving through development permits and into construction financing. Early signals suggest many are not.

According to City of Vancouver Development Permit Board data, the number of active development permits issued along the Broadway Corridor remains a fraction of the total eligible sites created by the plan's rezoning framework. Tracking of individual permit applications against the plan's rezoning map reveals a significant lag—particularly for the larger, more complex mixed-use and residential tower sites the plan was designed to catalyse.

CMHC's Housing Starts and Completions Survey data for the Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area reinforces the picture. Broadway Corridor construction starts remain well below what the plan's entitlement volume would suggest is possible. A site that received rezoning approval in 2023 would typically require 18 to 24 months to move through development permit, building permit, and pre-sale launch before a shovel enters the ground—putting the earliest realistic starts at 2025 and 2026. However, financing conditions have made even that timeline optimistic for many projects.

Why Sites Sit Idle

The reasons are structural, clustering around three interlocking pressures: construction costs, financing conditions, and pre-sale absorption.

Construction costs along the Broadway Corridor for mid-rise and high-rise residential are tracking in the range of $450 to $550 per square foot for hard costs alone, according to industry benchmarks from firms including Altus Group and Rider Levett Bucknall. When soft costs, financing, land, and developer margin are layered in, the all-in cost of delivering a Broadway Corridor condo unit frequently exceeds what the pre-sale market will currently bear.

The pre-sale market has cooled considerably. Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver data points to softer pre-sale absorption across the Broadway Corridor relative to the city-wide average, as higher mortgage carrying costs have reduced the pool of qualified purchasers. For developers, launching a pre-sale campaign that fails to hit the 60 to 70 per cent threshold most lenders require before releasing construction financing is a project-stopper.

Land values have been repriced upward by the Broadway Plan's entitlements, creating a basis problem for developers who acquired sites at post-rezoning prices. BC Assessment data shows significant land value appreciation since the plan's approval, compressing development margins for later entrants. The Urban Development Institute Pacific Region has publicly flagged the financing gap as a systemic issue.

The Opportunity in the Stall

A stalled pipeline is a repricing event, creating opportunity for those with the right capital structure. The most immediate opportunity lies in CMHC's MLI Select program, which offers preferential financing for purpose-built rental projects. For sites where condo pre-sale math no longer works, a pivot to purpose-built rental underwritten through MLI Select can change the financing calculus.

Pension-backed capital is also increasingly active in transit-oriented sites where long-term income potential justifies patient equity. For smaller developers, the calculus may involve joint ventures with larger balance-sheet partners or phased development strategies.

What Policy Can Do

Streamlining the development permit process—which currently adds 12 to 18 months to many projects—is the most frequently cited near-term fix. A dedicated Broadway Plan permit stream would reduce carrying cost uncertainty.

Metro Vancouver's regional housing supply tracking has highlighted the need for better data transparency. Publicly accessible dashboards showing entitled capacity versus active permits would allow the market to identify bottlenecks.

Market Snapshot: Broadway Corridor

  • Plan area: Approximately 50 blocks, Clark Drive to Vine Street
  • Rezoning approval: 2022
  • Hard construction costs: $450–$550 per sq ft (mid-rise residential; excludes soft costs, land, and financing)
  • Pre-sale threshold for construction financing: Typically 60–70% of units
  • Key financing tool: CMHC MLI Select (purpose-built rental)
  • Critical window: Next 18 months for first-wave site activation

The Bottom Line

The Broadway Plan is being tested in ways its architects did not fully anticipate. The gap between entitled capacity and active construction is measurable and growing, but it is a gap that smart operators, patient capital, and targeted policy can close. The corridor's fundamentals—rapid transit access, proximity to employment, and strong demographic demand—remain among the strongest in Metro Vancouver. The next 18 months will reveal whether the development ecosystem can adapt to translate this planning achievement into the housing the city needs.