Did land here go up more than the rest of BC?

What we did

Each year BC Assessment puts out a list of every property in the province and what it thinks that property is worth. The list is called a roll. The 2026 roll uses prices from 1 July 2025, six months before it came out.

The roll counts the land on its own, apart from the buildings. So we took just the land value. We divided it by the number of homes on the list. Then we compared 2018 with 2026 in each rural area of BC with at least 300 homes on it.

We start at 2018 because that is the oldest year anyone can still get. BC Assessment replaces the file every year, and only the 2018 one was saved. So this covers eight years, not the six years the argument uses.

One more thing to keep in mind. These are BC Assessment's estimates, not sale prices. It works out what it thinks a property would have sold for. It gets close, but it is a guess, and how close it gets can differ from place to place.

Land nearly doubled here. It nearly doubled nearly everywhere.

The Gulf Islands went up +102.3%. All of rural British Columbia together went up 83.3%, and the middle rural area went up 90.7%. So the islands went up MORE than the typical rural place, by about twelve points.

Put the 60 rural areas in order, biggest rise first, and the islands come 24th. 23 rural places went up more than the islands did, and 36 went up less. Haida Gwaii went up 202.8%. Counting both of the Gulf Islands tax areas together gives 96%.

So the islands are not ordinary, and this page does not say they are. They are inside the same range as the rest of rural British Columbia, toward the upper end of it. What the record does not show is a different kind of price event here, which is what the argument needs.

One thing to watch out for. Compared with the whole province the islands do look special: +102.3% here against 28.9% for BC. That comparison is not a fair one. The provincial figure is held down two ways. Land in and around Vancouver grew far more slowly than rural land, and the province added 9.7 percent more lots while rural British Columbia added 3.1 percent. Adding lots pulls a per-lot average down. Comparing an island to a city is not the right test. Comparing it to other rural places is, and that is the chart above.

One of the bars needs a warning label. The tax area called Gulf Islands Rural 763 went up only +32.4%, the lowest on the chart. We do not use it as an island number, because it is not only islands: it also covers Willis Point and Durrance Road on Vancouver Island. That may be most of why it looks so different. The island tax area we can rely on is the other one, Salt Spring and the south Gulf Islands, at +102.3%.

Source. BC Assessment, Roll Totals by Jurisdiction and Property Class, residential class, 2018 revised roll and 2026 revised roll. The 2018 file is no longer on that page; the saved copy is here. Land value divided by the number of homes on the roll. Both rolls are priced at 1 July of the year before: 1 July 2017 and 1 July 2025. The catalogue holds only the current year, so the 2018 file is linked separately to the Internet Archive copy, which is the only one that still exists.

Houses did not double

A normal Gulf Islands house went up about +48.2% since the 2021 roll. The middle community of the 14 shown here went up 55.3%. BC Assessment lists 39 communities in both years, and the middle one of all of them went up 51%. Against the full list the islands come 18th, just below the middle.

We chart 14 of the 39 to keep the chart readable, and the ones left out include twelve Greater Victoria towns that all went up LESS than the islands did. Leaving them out makes the islands look lower in the pack than they are, so the full-list number is printed here too.

This chart starts in 2021 because that is as far back as BC Assessment's own community-by- community list goes. Our own island numbers go back further, and over the longer window a typical Gulf Islands house went up +87.1% from the 2018 roll, which is more than the shorter window shows. Both are below.

From the 2020 roll to the highest point, which was 2023, it rose +59.9%. That is a lot. It is not double.

Source. BC Assessment, annual Vancouver Island property assessment news releases, 2021 and 2026 rolls. Typical value of a single-family home, median. Rolls priced at 1 July 2020 and 1 July 2025. Both releases are live on the BC Assessment site.

Here is what IS different about the islands

The number of lots on the tax list here did not grow.

Salt Spring and the south Gulf Islands added 13 lots in eight years, on a list of more than thirteen thousand. The other Gulf Islands tax area went from 665 to 665, which is the same number, though that one takes in some mainland too.

The fairest comparison is the rural area next door, which holds Denman and Hornby along with mainland Comox Valley land. It added 224, or 1.7%. The provincial figure is much bigger, but most of it is apartments and townhouses in cities, so we show it and leave it there rather than leaning on it. Comparing an island to a city would be the same mistake this page warns about above.

The record shows the count. It does not show why. It cannot tell us whether few homes were added because of rules, or water, or septic, or because nobody asked.

Source. BC Assessment, Roll Totals by Jurisdiction and Property Class, residential class, 2018 and 2026 revised rolls. The 2018 file is no longer on that page; the saved copy is here. Count of residential folios, which is the number of homes on the tax roll. ⚠️ We do not yet hold a rural-BC-only folio count, so the comparison here is to the rural jurisdiction next door (Courtenay Rural) and to the province. The province includes city apartments, which is why the page labels it that way rather than leaning on it.

Check us

Every number above comes from two files anyone can download. If you sum a different column you will get different answers, so here is exactly what we did:

• Property class 01 Residential, all six subclasses: vacant, single family, ALR, farm, other, strata.
• The value column is Actual - Land. The Gen Net and Sch Net columns are after exemptions and will not reproduce these numbers.
• Divide by Occurrences, which is the count of residential lots on the roll.
• Rural means jurisdiction codes 700 to 799. That includes Haida Gwaii (750), whose name does not end in Rural.
• The ranking and the middle figure use the 60 rural jurisdictions with at least 300 residential lots.
• Two jurisdictions are named Courtenay Rural. This page means 771, the one holding Denman and Hornby, not 784.

Some of the areas in the chart hold a Trust island along with a lot of mainland. Those are marked "No" in the Islands column, and here is what is in them:

• Courtenay Rural (holds Denman and Hornby). Holds Denman and Hornby, and also mainland Comox Valley land. Not the islands on their own.
• Nanaimo Rural (holds Gabriola). Holds Gabriola, and also mainland land around Nanaimo.
• Sechelt Rural (holds Gambier). Holds Gambier, and also a long stretch of Sunshine Coast mainland.
• Gulf Islands Rural 763 (islands and mainland Willis Point). Named Gulf Islands, but it also covers Willis Point and Durrance Road on Vancouver Island, in the Juan de Fuca electoral area. We cannot say how much of it is island, so it is not counted as one here.

What this page cannot show you

Read these before you use any number above. Three of them cut against our own argument.

• These are estimates, not sale prices. BC Assessment works out what it thinks each property would have sold for on 1 July. It gets close, but it is a guess, and how close it gets can differ from one place to another.
• A percent is not a dollar, and the islands started high. Island land was already expensive in 2018, so the same percentage costs far more here. Land under a home in the smaller Gulf Islands went up 32 percent and that was about $148,000. Land around Williams Lake went up 94 percent and that was about $87,000. Both numbers are in the table, and the dollars matter more to a person trying to buy.
• We cannot show that stopping lots changed prices, and our own numbers point the other way. The island area that made no new lots at all had the SMALLEST price rise on the chart. The area that made the most new lots had the biggest. We do not know why, and we are not claiming that stopping lots holds prices down or pushes them up. This page is about whether prices here moved differently, not about what caused them to move.
• A count of homes does not say why. The tax list shows how many homes there are. It does not show whether few were added because of rules, or water, or septic, or because nobody applied. It also cannot tell a lot that was never made from one that was made and counted as farm or forest land.
• We cannot do Denman on its own. BC Assessment publishes its numbers by tax jurisdiction. Denman and Hornby are smaller units called tax areas, 771B and 771F, inside a jurisdiction that also takes in mainland Comox Valley land, and the per-tax-area figures are not published. So there is no public land-price history for one island. We asked BC Assessment for those figures on 19 September 2026 and will print what comes back, including a refusal, because a refusal would itself establish that no usable public record of this exists.
• We cannot start at 2020. We have to start at 2018. BC Assessment replaces its file every year. Only the 2018 one was saved anywhere, so this page covers eight years, not the six years the argument uses.
• We chose which places to show. The land chart shows rural areas with at least 300 homes on the tax list, which is the same set the ranking uses. The house chart shows the communities BC Assessment itself lists in its Vancouver Island news release. Every number for every place is in the tables, so you can check the ones we did not draw.

So what does this mean for the new rules?

Prices here went up like prices everywhere else in rural BC. That matters. Island-only rules are being asked for because something island-only was said to have happened to prices.

One thing here IS island-only: almost no new homes are being added to the tax list. That was already true before the new bylaw, which cuts back the right to split land into more lots.

Island prices have moved with the rest of rural BC for eight years. Nothing in the record suggests they move on their own. So there is no evidence yet that a change to island rules would move them on their own either. That may do other things, and those are worth arguing about on their own terms.

Can it be changed back later?

Two things get said when a rule like this one is proposed. The first is that if the rule turns out to be too tight for somebody, they can ask for an exception. The second is that if the island changes its mind, the rule can simply be changed back.

Those promises are part of why people accept a rule they are not sure about, so they are worth checking. Both have answers you can look up. Here they are, with the law and the bylaw quoted so you can check us.

What does the new rule actually say?

It sets how much land you need for each house, and it caps how big a house can be.

There are two different rules here and they are easy to mix up, so here they are apart.

The first is about making a NEW lot. “Minimum lot area is 64.0 hectares” is the rule. The draft sets that figure zone by zone, in Residential, Rural Residential, Land-Share Housing, Agriculture, Forestry, Commercial, Light Industrial, Institutional, Conservation and Park, and then again as a general rule for the whole bylaw: section 8.1(4) reads “The minimum lot area for all zones is 64.0 hectares.” Sixty-four hectares is about 158 acres. That is the number that ends ordinary subdivision. It is not quite every zone. The Affordable Rental Housing zone sets no minimum of its own, and the site-specific rules for named places inside it go down to 1.0 and 0.7 hectares. The marine zones set none either. Elsewhere, site-specific rules run from 0.8 hectares up to 45. So the general sentence and the zones underneath it do not read the same way.

The second is about how many homes may stand on land you already own, and it only applies outside the Agricultural Land Reserve. There the Agriculture zone reads “The minimum lot area per principal dwelling unit outside the Agricultural Land Reserve is 15.0 hectares”, about 37 acres, while the Forestry zone reads 64.0 ha. Both sentences sit under a heading that reads “Density”.

If your land IS in the Agricultural Land Reserve, the SECOND rule does not reach it: both those figures are written “outside” the reserve. The first one still does. The 64-hectare minimum sits under a heading that reads “Subdivision Lot Area Requirements” and says nothing about the reserve, so it applies to farmland in it as much as to land out of it.

What the reserve adds is limits of its own, and the draft sets two: a dwelling on reserve land may not be larger than 410 square metres, and a reserve lot may have “a maximum of one (1) secondary suite or secondary dwelling unit”. One or the other, not both.

House size is zone by zone too, so the 300 is not an island-wide number either. The Residential zone says “The maximum gross floor area of a principal dwelling unit shall not exceed 300 square metres”, about 3,230 square feet, and the Rural Residential and Forestry zones set the same figure in their own words.

Farmland is capped too, at a different number: “On land in the Agricultural Land Reserve, maximum gross floor area of a dwelling unit is 410 square metres”, about 4,410 square feet. That covers nearly all of it. Of Denman’s 156 lots zoned Agriculture, 148 are in the reserve. The 8 that are not have no house-size cap in the draft at all, which we mention because it is true and not because it is common.

Check it. Draft Land Use Bylaw No. 264, third reading, in the 15 September 2026 agenda package · Draft Land Use Bylaw No. 264, in the 24 August 2026 agenda package

One line in the farm rules, which we cannot make sense of

Two sentences about homes on farmland appear to say different things.

We publish this because it is better found now than after the rules are in force, and because we would rather show our working than quietly pick whichever reading suits us.

The Agriculture section says: “Only one (1) dwelling unit is permitted per lot, both inside and outside the Agricultural Land Reserve.” Three lines later the same section says: “For land within the Agricultural Land Reserve, a maximum of one (1) secondary suite or secondary dwelling unit per lot is permitted.”

The difficulty is that the draft defines a secondary suite as “an accessory, self-contained dwelling unit within the principal dwelling unit”, and a detached secondary dwelling unit as “a detached dwelling unit”. Both are dwelling units by the draft's own definitions. Read strictly, the first sentence allows one dwelling unit and the second allows a second one.

The word that would settle it is missing. The Rural Residential section uses “principal dwelling unit” where it means the main house, three times in four lines. The Agriculture sentence says only “dwelling unit”. If it was meant to say principal, it does not.

We are not saying anyone was careless, and we are not saying which reading is right. We are saying a farm owner reading the draft cannot tell from it whether they may have a suite, and that is worth fixing before adoption rather than arguing about afterwards. It is a question for the Islands Trust, and if we are given an answer we will print it here.

Check it. Draft Land Use Bylaw No. 264 s. 5.5(4) and s. 5.5(7), third reading, 15 September 2026 · Draft Land Use Bylaw No. 264, definitions (secondary suite, secondary dwelling unit)

Can a landowner just ask the trustees for an exception?

Probably not for this one. The main exception tool is not allowed to change density.

There are two kinds of exception in British Columbia law, and neither is a free pass.

You do not have to take our reading of the law for this one, because the Islands Trust has written the answer down in plain words. Its own fact sheet on applying for a variance says: “Pretty well any regulation in an Islands Trust land use bylaw, other than use or density, can be considered for variance.”

The first is a development variance permit. A local committee can grant one. But the law sets a hard limit: a development variance permit “must not vary … the use or density of land from that specified in the bylaw”.

The second is a board of variance, which exists for cases where a rule causes real hardship. The same fact sheet says it “can generally consider variances to siting, building or structure dimensions, or subdivision servicing requirements in industrial or agricultural zones”. Servicing means things like the road and the water line. How much land a lot must have is not on that list, and the law that sets the list does not put it there either. The board can also only allow a “minor variance”, and only if it thinks the change does not “vary permitted uses and densities under the applicable bylaw”.

So everything turns on one question: is a minimum lot area a rule about “density”? On Denman, the bylaw answers that itself. Land Use Bylaw 186 has a section headed “Determination of Density”, and it treats “units per hectare, lot coverage and minimum lot areas” as the same family of rule. The new draft states its figure as an area “per principal dwelling unit”, under a heading that says “Density”. Written that way, it looks like a density rule, and a development variance permit is not allowed to touch it.

Check it. Islands Trust, Fact Sheet: Applying for a Variance (14 January 2021) · Local Government Act s. 498(2)(a) (development variance permits) · Local Government Act s. 540 (what you may apply to a board of variance about) · Local Government Act s. 542(1)(c)(iv) (board powers) · Denman Island Land Use Bylaw No. 186, s. 1.5

Is that settled?

No. A judge decided the opposite for another town, on a bylaw written differently.

We are not going to pretend this one is closed, because a court has gone the other way.

In 2022 the Supreme Court of British Columbia looked at the City of Penticton, which had granted a variance for a lot that did not meet the minimum width and area for its zone. The judge held that minimum parcel size comes from a different power in the Act than density does, and so the ban on varying density did not stop it. The challenge was dismissed.

But read why. The judge pointed out that Penticton’s lot-size rules sat in a part of its bylaw headed “Subdivision and Development Regulations”. The answer turned on how that bylaw was written. Denman’s is written the other way round: its lot-area rules sit under headings about density and are stated per dwelling unit.

So the fair summary is this. The same reasoning that let Penticton grant its variance points the other way on Denman. That is one judge, in one case, about one town, and nobody has ever tested Denman’s wording. Anyone who tells you the answer is obvious, in either direction, is going past what the record supports.

Check it. Penticton Society for Transparent Governance and Responsible Development v. Penticton (City), 2022 BCSC 2111, paras. 27 and 30–31 · Local Government Act s. 479(1)(c) and (d) (the two different powers)

Could the trustees simply change the rule back?

Not by themselves. The density rules are in the community plan, and a plan change needs a provincial minister.

This is the part most people have not been told, and it does not depend on any unsettled question.

There are two bylaws here, not one. Bylaw 264 is the land use bylaw. Bylaw 260 changes the Official Community Plan, which is the island’s plan, and among the things it takes out of that plan are the density cap and the density bank.

That matters because of a rule about plans: once a community plan is adopted, every bylaw a local government passes after it “must be consistent with the relevant plan”. The Trust’s own planner writes the same thing in the agenda package: “Draft bylaws must be consistent with the OCP and LUB in effect at the time of consideration and adoption.”

So putting the old numbers back is not one vote to undo one bylaw. If the plan no longer supports that density, the plan has to be changed too. And a change to the plan “has no effect … until it is approved by the minister”. That minister sits in the provincial cabinet, is elected by nobody on Denman, and is under no deadline to answer.

You do not have to take our word for how that works, because it is happening on Denman already. In the same agenda package, for a different proposal, the planner writes: “An OCP amendment is required because the proposal is not consistent with the objectives of this designation.” That is the ordinary answer when somebody wants something the plan does not allow. Not a variance. A plan amendment.

Check it. Local Government Act s. 478(2) (bylaws must be consistent with the plan) · Islands Trust Act s. 27(2) (Executive Committee approval, and the minister for a plan) · Staff report and draft bylaws, 24 August 2026 agenda package

What we are not saying

• We are not saying the rule can never be changed back. It can.
• We are not saying the trustees are hiding this. The consistency rule is stated plainly in their own staff report, which is where we got it.
• We are not saying a landowner should give up on asking. Whether a Denman lot-area rule can be varied has never been tested, and the one case that looks closest was decided on different wording.
• What we are saying is that “we can just change it back” describes a smaller act than the one the law describes. Changing the plan back means a new bylaw, a public hearing, the Executive Committee, and a provincial minister with no deadline. Two elected trustees cannot do it on their own.
• And to check a promise that a rule will be revisited if it does not work, you need a number and a date. We still have not found either in the record. If they are set, this page will say so.

This is a reading of public documents, not legal advice. We are not lawyers. Every source is linked above so you can check it, and if you are making a decision about your own land you should talk to someone who is.

What planning costs per resident · Who has to build the housing · The economic study