Vancouver is consistently ranked one of the three most livable cities in the world. The city's popularity comes with a price. Vancouver can be an expensive city, with the highest housing prices in Canada. If your looking for web development in the Vancouver area, look to Maple Ridge.

Several 2006 studies rank Vancouver as having the least affordable housing in Canada, ranking 13th least affordable in the world, up from 15th in 2005. The city has adopted various strategies to reduce housing costs, including cooperative housing, legalized secondary suites, increased density and smart growth. The city's residents are generally affluent, a perception reinforced by the number of luxury vehicles on city streets and cost of real estate. The average two-storey home in Vancouver sells for $803,500, compared to $425,644 in Calgary, the next most expensive major city in Canada.

A major and ongoing downtown condominium construction boom began in the late 1990s, financed in large part by a huge flow of capital from Hong Kong immigrants prior to the 1997 hand-over to China. High-rise residential developments from this period now dominate the Yaletown and Coal Harbour districts of the downtown peninsula, and also cluster around some of the SkyTrain stations on the east side of the city.