June 16, 2025
Posted by Matt Scalena PREC.
Brought to you by Skytrain Condo Living, the Only Real Estate Platform Licensed by TransLink.
The real estate industry is gripped by a dangerous “fight or flight” mentality that’s pushing realtors toward overly conservative advice—and it could cost their clients millions. While headlines scream about market uncertainty and oversupply, seasoned developers are quietly closing deals with buyers who understand that today’s hesitation becomes tomorrow’s premium pricing. According to Sunny Hahm, Principal at Tandem Strategies and veteran of Vancouver presale condo investments, the cost of waiting may far exceed the perceived safety of staying on the sidelines.
Hahm, who has navigated multiple market cycles over 15 years in Vancouver’s development sector, argues that realtors are falling into the same psychological trap that gripped the industry during COVID-19’s early days. “It’s easier to give a safer or more conservative recommendation, which at this stage is to not buy, wait and hold and see what happens than it is to lead with a recommendation that might lead to a little bit more risk,” Hahm explains. But this risk-averse approach ignores a fundamental question: Is it riskier to buy in a market without competition, or to wait until everyone else realizes the opportunity has passed?
What You’ll Learn:
- How the “fight or flight” mentality is driving flawed realtor recommendations across Metro Vancouver
- Why fear-driven media coverage creates an echo chamber of conservative advice
- How broad market headlines about oversupply don’t apply to specific West Side neighborhoods
- The hidden cost of conservative advice when supply constraints hit in 2-3 years
- How successful buyers are navigating today’s market without competition
- Why waiting for “perfect clarity” guarantees paying premium prices later
- Specific strategies for evaluating neighborhood-level opportunities versus market-wide trends
- How to identify when realtor advice is influenced by media pessimism rather than local data
The Psychology of Playing It Safe
The current market has created what Hahm describes as “extremes” where industry professionals are either “doubling down on strategy and fighting for every sale” or “pausing everything, canceling projects, delaying pre-sale launches.” This binary thinking has infected realtor advice, with many defaulting to the seemingly safer position of recommending clients wait.
But Hahm challenges this logic with a pointed question: “Is it the best time to advise your clients to buy in a market where they’re not competing today? Or would it be better to advise your clients in three years from now when everyone’s competing for that same home, when there might be upward pressures of price?”
The danger lies in treating all market segments identically. While broad statistics might show 2,000-3,000 condominiums entering inventory across Metro Vancouver, every sub-market tells its own story. Take the Vancouver Westside, for instance: Hahm notes that West Side buyers face a drastically different reality than what regional headlines suggest. “If your client is specifically looking at the West side and they want to be in the West side market, I really encourage them to look at how many projects are coming through to completion over the next six months to a year,” he advises.
The West Side Reality Check
Hahm’s team recently conducted this exact analysis for a realtor group, revealing how misleading broad market data can be. While headlines trumpet overall inventory increases, the West Side market tells a different story. “There might be only a handful or not a handful, but couple hundred units that might be sitting on market. And even then, they might not be the perfect location, product type, size, price point.”
This granular analysis reveals opportunities that broad market sentiment obscures. For West Side buyers specifically, the combination of project delays, cancellations, and limited new supply creates a fundamentally different investment landscape than what general market reports suggest.
The key insight: location-specific analysis trumps market-wide generalizations every time.
The Hidden Cost of Conservative Advice
Hahm’s experience with Beedie Living’s Kin Collection project illustrates the potential cost of conservative thinking. Launched during COVID-19’s height in July 2020, the 124-townhome project faced industry skepticism. “Traditionally, townhomes…even some of the larger sales and marketing groups, other industry consultants, mentioned to us, you know, you can’t pre-sale townhomes, and especially at that scale, 124,” Hahm recalls.
The project team faced their own “fight or flight” moment. “Either we hit pause on 124 townhomes to pre-sale because…all the market data and information was telling us not to, or the alternative was to fight and we had to just double down on our strategy.” They chose to fight, achieving 90% sell-out within seven months.
The success of Kin Collection demonstrates how conservative industry sentiment can miss emerging opportunities, even during periods of genuine market uncertainty.
The Fear-Selling Media Machine
The real estate industry’s conservative bias isn’t happening in a vacuum—it’s amplified by a media ecosystem that profits from fear. Sensationalized headlines about “market crashes” and “housing collapses” generate more clicks than nuanced neighborhood analysis, creating an echo chamber of pessimism that influences both realtor sentiment and client expectations.
This fear-driven content cycle creates what Hahm identifies as “over communication with no clear message, where it just becomes noise.” Social media algorithms reward dramatic predictions over measured analysis, leading to a steady stream of crisis messaging that obscures actual market opportunities.
The psychological impact is profound: when realtors create this constant doom-and-gloom content for clicks and views or simply consume it, it naturally influences their advice toward the seemingly safer “wait and see” approach. But this media-driven conservatism often conflicts with on-the-ground market realities in specific neighborhoods and product segments. It is easy to advise buyers to pile on when everyone is excited to buy.
Breaking Through the Noise
The solution isn’t reckless optimism but rather what Hahm calls “cutting through the noise” with deeper research. “If everyone does just a little bit more, like five or 10% more research of trying to just understand the bigger picture, the macroeconomics of what’s actually happening, like trying to connect all the dots,” market participants can make more informed decisions.
This approach requires buyers and their advisors to move beyond sensationalized media headlines and dive into sub-market specifics. Hahm emphasizes: “Every sub-market is operating differently. Every product type is operating differently. But if we encouraged a realtor to just come into one of our presentation centers even and just spend time with our sales team so that we can help educate them so that in turn they can go out there and help educate their clients.”
The antidote to fear-selling isn’t blind optimism—it’s granular, location-specific data that cuts through the algorithmic noise.
The Fundamentals Remain Strong
Despite current uncertainty, Hahm maintains conviction about Vancouver’s long-term outlook. “The fundamentals are there for Vancouver. Like we are going to be faced in, you know, perhaps two to three years time from now with a supply constraint with the lack of housing starts right now.”
This creates a timing paradox: the market conditions causing today’s hesitation are setting up tomorrow’s supply constraints. “We will be faced where the resale inventory will work its way through,” Hahm predicts, creating upward price pressure when current inventory levels normalize.
Why This Matters to Property Buyers
First-Time Buyers: Today’s market offers selection and negotiating power unavailable during competitive periods. Conservative advice that delays entry could mean facing bidding wars and higher prices when market sentiment shifts, and missing out on time in the market as an owner building equity and having a secure roof over your head that you own.
Investors: Ground-oriented products like townhomes and multiplexes are proving resilient while high-rise inventory sits. Smart investors can make the most out of this blood-in-the-streets moment in certain areas of the market to carve out exceptional deals.
Downsizers: Empty nesters moving from single-family homes have significant opportunity to secure premium condo locations without competition, particularly on the West Side where new supply remains limited.
Navigating Today’s Market Successfully
Hahm’s advice centers on decisive action backed by thorough research: “Act decisively, but don’t act blindly. Like you need to do your homework. And once you have that homework done, be very decisive to build confidence.”
The homework involves neighborhood-specific analysis rather than broad market assessments. Successful buyers are asking targeted questions: How many projects are completing in my target area? What’s the actual competitive inventory for my specific criteria? How does local supply compare to demand patterns?
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How can I identify whether my realtor’s advice is based on fear-driven media narratives versus actual neighborhood data?
A: Demand hyper-local statistics: recent sales in your specific building or block, current inventory levels within your target area, and days on market for comparable properties. If your realtor defaults to broad market doom predictions instead of drilling down into your specific sub-market dynamics, that’s a red flag they may be influenced more by sensationalized headlines than ground-level market intelligence.
Q: How do I separate legitimate market concerns from fear-driven noise?
A: Focus on fundamentals: local supply and demand, employment levels, population growth, and infrastructure development in your target neighborhood. These factors matter more than viral social media predictions.
Q: How can I evaluate whether current market conditions create opportunity in my target neighborhood?
A: Focus on local supply dynamics, competition levels, and pricing relative to recent comparable sales. Look at how many projects are actually completing in your area versus broad market numbers.
Q: What should I do if my realtor recommends waiting despite finding suitable properties?
A: Request specific data supporting the wait recommendation. Remember, no one has a crystal ball—including your realtor. Ultimately, this is your decision based on your financial situation, housing needs, and risk tolerance, not your advisor’s comfort level with market uncertainty.
The Strategic Opportunity Ahead
The current market represents what Hahm believes could be “the most opportunistic market to get back in versus hesitating and waiting.” This opportunity exists precisely because of the widespread conservative sentiment creating artificial scarcity of buyers relative to quality inventory.
Smart buyers and their representatives are recognizing that today’s “risk” of buying without competition may be far lower than tomorrow’s risk of competing in a supply-constrained market. As Hahm notes, “hesitation and generally like any pause in market or any hesitation is expensive.”
The question isn’t whether Vancouver’s real estate market will recover—the fundamentals ensure it will. The question is whether buyers will position themselves to benefit from today’s opportunities or wait until those opportunities become obvious to everyone else.
Key Takeaway: In real estate, the real estate investment strategy for 2025 often requires short-term courage. Today’s conservative advice could become tomorrow’s expensive mistake.
These insights come from the Vancouver Real Estate Podcast. For more market analysis and expert interviews, visit vancouverrealestatepodcast.com.