BURST
After the retail mall at Oakridge Park opened to buzzy fanfare this week, anticipation is growing over when the first phase of its residential towers will be complete.
More than 3,000 residences are planned for the next phase of the Oakridge Park project, and before construction of these started, a majority of the luxury condo units were sold at peak prices starting around 2019.
By December of that year, the developers of Oakridge had sold $1 billion worth of luxury condo units in less than a year, according to Bloomberg News.
At the time, it said that was more than the combined pre-sales of all downtown Vancouver developments during the same period.
From the start, there has been market attention on the $2,000-plus average price per square foot paid for the units at Oakridge Park.
Now, years later, the region’s entire pre-sale condo market has seen a sea change that started becoming more obvious by mid-2025.
Values have fallen across most types of condo units, and there are thousands of completed but unsold units.
So what will this mean when it comes time for buyers of the pre-sale condo units at the Oakridge Park?
They are under contract to pay a higher price than what the condos are worth now in the market and to their lenders.
“The original pre-sales for Oakridge Park when it originally launched sold at extremely high prices that may not be supported by market conditions upon completion,” said Mike Stewart, a Vancouver-based real estate agent who specializes in pre-sale condos and has seen boom-and-bust cycles over several decades.
Developers don’t commonly disclose the number of units that have been pre-sold, or how many they have left to sell.
In general, projects need to sell a certain number that is usually more than the majority to qualify for construction financing.
Stewart, who has been tracking incentives offered by developers as the pre-sale market has slowed, recalls there was a shock when the Oakridge Park units were asking between $2,000 to $2,500 per square foot.
“It was crazy high, even at that time. There was no context or other comparable luxury towers in the area like there is for (luxury towers) downtown.”
Stewart believes that while there will be buyers who will have challenges completing sales because of the turn in the presale market. It is also the case that Oakridge Park has always been an outlier, making it more challenging for assumptions about whether or not there will be issues for buyers to close.
“Who knows? Many of these buyers were very well-heeled. It’s hard to know. It depends on what was purchased, and when it was purchased.”
A spokesperson on behalf of Oakridge Park said it is “excited to open the retail centre this week as it is a significant milestone for the project. Work on the residential component continues, and we expect unit closings to begin in late 2026 or early 2027.”
She confirmed that the first phase of the redevelopment includes four market housing buildings and one non-market housing building.
“The City of Vancouver will operate both the non-market housing and the project’s civic centre as part of its long-term commitment to community use and affordability.”
With unit closings not beginning for another half year, it is not possible to say by how much value for the condo units at Oakridge Park may have fallen.
There are individual units at luxury towers that have been completed in recent years and put back onto the Multiple Listing Service site, where their asking and eventually selling prices offer a sense of how market values have changed.
At The Butterfly building, a 331-unit luxury condo building in the city’s West End, contracts for units that were signed starting in late 2017 began closing in late 2024 after the building was finished in the summer of that year.
There are currently over a dozen units that are for sale on the MLS. In March 2026, the 3,800-square foot penthouse unit on the 57th and top floor sold for $20.8 million, according to land title documents, which are filed when a sale is complete and title is transferred. At that sale price, the cost is around $5,373 per square foot. The presale listing price was around $30 million or $7,894 per square foot.
The entire Oakridge Park redevelopment project has been underway for over a decade.
In 2018, Westbank Corp. and QuadReal Property Group unveiled a plan to transform the long-time shopping mall site. They hailed the development as more than just retail or residential, but a site that would serve as a “cultural hub” and a second downtown area for the city.
In 2022, the City of Vancouver approved a rezoning application that increased the heights for residential and office buildings in later phases for a total of what could be 14 buildings with market condo, market and affordable rental residences for 6,000 people.
In an interview earlier this week with Postmedia reporter Dan Fumano, Westbank CEO Ian Gillespie said that while people might be expecting a significant portion of the presales at Oakridge Park not to close, the vast majority will.
“I think people would be surprised at the percentage of people that are closing, it’s much higher than some people might think,” Gillespie said.
“The number one thing we can do is we can make sure that the product that we’re delivering is as good or better than what we promised when we went into it. … I can’t control the market. What I can control is: did I deliver what I said I would deliver,” Gillespie said.
“I hope what Vancouverites experience at Oakridge Park is that the promises we made have been met, and we believe exceeded,” he added. “For them to judge.”
With files from Dan Fumano