A national survey of what $500,000 buys in newly built condos was unable to find a single example in Vancouver proper – the only city in the survey to have zero stock of new units under $500K.

The latest condo market survey from real estate data company Altus Group said that buyers would have to go to a nearby city such as Burnaby to find any new condos priced at less than half a million, and even those would only be around 450 square feet.

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In Toronto, buyers with $500K or less to spend on a new condo would have to buy a 430-square-foot unit – less than half the size of the national average for a new condo at that price.

Elsewhere in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, $500K would buy a two-bedroom unit of over 1,000 square feet near downtown Kitchener. In Calgary and Edmonton, buyers with $500K could find two-bedroom units between 850-1,000 square feet in high-rise buildings in “desirable areas” near the downtown core.

The report also looked at new-build condo sales over 2017 in major urban markets, and found that Vancouver was an “outlier” with a significant decline in sales of new units – “impacted by the sharp drop in new condominium supply coming onto the market,” according to Altus Group.

It added, “Vancouver is the tightest new condominium apartment market in the country and sales levels are not reflective of underlying demand, which remains very strong.”