How many houses are torn down in Vancouver each year?

What we found

• 620

  House demolitions a year, on average, since 2017. Multiplex zoning in late 2023 didn’t change that: 606 in 2023, 534 in 2024 and 684 in 2025.

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• 1 in 11

  Vancouver houses torn down since the 2017 forecast. 5,913 house demolition permits from February 22, 2017 to October 2, 2026, out of about 67,700 houses.

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• 1 in 8

  Where the city lands by early 2030 at the 2017 to 2025 pace of about 620 house demolitions a year. The forecast was 1 in 4.

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• 5×

  The pace needed to reach 1 in 4 by 2030: about 3,200 houses a year, five times the current rate.

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• 39%

  Of houses torn down since 2020 were built before 1940. The typical one was built in 1946.

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• 3%

  Share of the property’s value that was the house, for the typical Vancouver house torn down since 2020. The rest was land.

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The busiest year was 2022, with 871 house demolitions, as builders rushed duplexes. Since R1-1 zoning arrived in late 2023, the count has stayed in the same 500 to 700 band. More homes go on each lot, but not more lots turn over.

Are 1 in 4 Vancouver houses being torn down?

No. In 2017, the news said a quarter of Vancouver’s detached houses could come down by 2030. Here is that forecast next to what has happened, as 100 houses:

To reach 1 in 4 by 2030, the city would need about 3,200 house demolitions a year. That’s five times the pace since 2017.

Where the 1‑in‑4 number came from

On February 22, 2017, the Globe and Mail, CBC and a dozen other outlets ran the same story: a quarter of detached Vancouver homes could be torn down in the next 13 years. UBC’s news office summed up the coverage the same day.

The work behind it came from UBC architecture professor Joe Dahmen and data analyst Jens von Bergmann. Dahmen built a tool to forecast teardowns from one idea: when a house is worth very little next to its land, it’s likely to come down.

Their published write-up gives the odds for one house, not a share of the whole city. For houses assessed as close to worthless, the odds of a teardown top out a little above 60%. The city-wide quarter, and the 2030 date, are how the forecast was reported in the news.

Rules checked: September 2026. Sources: UBC News: “One-quarter of detached Vancouver homes could be torn down by 2030” (February 22, 2017, archived copy), Jens von Bergmann and Joe Dahmen: More on teardowns, Mountain Doodles (February 21, 2017). Bylaws change, so we confirm every figure against your specific lot during feasibility.

Why are so many Vancouver houses torn down?

The 2017 research was right about the reason. The houses that come down are worth almost nothing next to their land:

On a $1.4 million lot, a house worth $43,000 isn’t what a buyer is paying for. That’s also why the typical house that comes down is old. Houses torn down since 2020 were built in 1946, at the median. The typical house still standing in a single-family zone in 2020 was built in 1972. For the cost side, see what it costs to demolish a house.

How old are they?

Nearly 4 in 10 were built before 1940. Those are the houses heritage groups care most about. A house built before 1950 also has to have 75% of its materials recycled. See renovate or rebuild for when an older house is worth keeping.

The climate cost

A follow-up study in 2018 by Dahmen, von Bergmann and Misha Das looked at the carbon. It found new single-family homes in Vancouver would add one to three million tonnes of emissions from 2017 to 2050. Even an energy-efficient new home takes an average of 168 years to pay back the carbon used to build it.

Fewer teardowns than forecast means less of that carbon so far. More homes on each lot that does turn over, as with a duplex or multiplex, spreads it across more households.

Rules checked: September 2026. Sources: UBC News: Study highlights environmental cost of tearing down Vancouver’s single-family homes (May 23, 2018), Jens von Bergmann: Teardowns and emissions, Mountain Doodles (May 2018). Bylaws change, so we confirm every figure against your specific lot during feasibility.

How we counted

We used the City of Vancouver’s open data: every issued building permit to October 2, 2026, and the property tax report.

Teardowns: demolition permits for a single detached house, from February 22, 2017 (the day of the forecast) to October 2, 2026. The base: 67,665 lots with a house on them in single-family zones (RS and First Shaughnessy) on the 2020 assessment roll, the oldest roll the City publishes. Duplex zones aren’t included.

Year built and value: we matched 3,814 demolitions from 2020 on to the 2020 roll by address, which shows each house before it came down.

• A permit isn’t proof the house came down that year. A few permits are never used
• The forecast had no published method for its 1-in-4 figure, so we compare against the number as it was reported
• Pace to 2030 assumes the 2017 to 2025 average of 619 a year continues

Rules checked: September 2026. Sources: City of Vancouver Open Data: Issued building permits, City of Vancouver Open Data: Property tax report (2020 and 2026 rolls). Bylaws change, so we confirm every figure against your specific lot during feasibility.