Burnaby commercial values

Burnaby carries a population of 249,125 and an estimated 6,900 commercial buildings, which works out to 27.7 commercial buildings for every thousand residents. Valulor classifies it as a tier 2 market, meaning it behaves as a secondary market where private capital sets the clearing price and institutions arrive selectively. That classification is not cosmetic: it decides which asset classes get a published Burnaby page at all, how wide the cap-rate band around a Burnaby valuation should be, and how much weight a single Burnaby transaction is allowed to carry when the band is next revised.

Anchoring a Burnaby valuation to a national cap-rate headline is the most common error we see. Deals here average $7,200,000, and the buyers who write cheques at that size in British Columbia are not the same buyers who clear tier 1 product in the largest CMA. Valulor therefore builds the Burnaby view from the 4 bands published for this market first, and treats provincial and national figures as cross-checks only.

A Burnaby valuation on Valulor always resolves to a range, never to a single number. With 4 bands live for this market, the tool applies the band that matches your asset class, then reports the low, mid and high value that your net operating income supports in Burnaby. Every point of cap rate is worth roughly $14,899 of value on a $7,200,000 Burnaby deal, which is the single best argument for arguing the band rather than accepting the midpoint.

Commercial stock in Burnaby concentrates inside a handful of designated employment areas — Big Bend, Glenlyon Business Park and Still Creek among them, per City of Burnaby Official Community Plan industrial areas. Valulor names them because that is where Burnaby product is actually located, not because it prices them separately: this site measures cap rates and price per square foot at the Burnaby level only, so an asset in any of those areas is valued inside the same published Burnaby band and any district-level premium has to be argued from the rent roll rather than read off a table.

Across the 4 asset classes Valulor publishes for Burnaby, multi-residential prices tightest at a mid of 3.93% inside a 3.28% to 4.69% band, and office prices widest at a mid of 5.77% inside 5.12% to 6.53%. The distance between those two midpoints is 184 basis points, and that number is the most useful single description of the Burnaby risk curve.

Read the 184 basis point gap as a liquidity charge. In Burnaby, office needs to clear at a mid of 5.77% precisely because the buyer pool for it is thinner than the pool bidding multi-residential at 3.93%, and a thinner pool shows up as a wider band before it ever shows up as a lower price.

Every Burnaby band carries its own provenance flag. A band marked modelled is a baseline derived from the Burnaby cap-rate seed and tier and is clearly labelled as such; it is not a claim about a transaction that happened. When a real Burnaby comparable is verified and promoted, it overwrites the modelled baseline for that asset class and the band is re-cut with the observation count attached. Valulor will not print a Burnaby yield without saying where it came from.

Cap rates value income; price per square foot values the building. In Burnaby, the published range runs from $203 per square foot for office to $437 per square foot for multi-residential. Anyone underwriting a Burnaby asset should test both views: a price that looks fair on yield and unfair on a per-square-foot basis usually means the rent roll is carrying risk the cap rate has not priced.

Marketing time is the second half of that picture. Retail takes the longest to clear in Burnaby at 105 days on market, which is the practical reason a Burnaby seller who needs certainty of close accepts a number below the band mid.

Because Burnaby holds roughly 6,900 commercial buildings, the per-square-foot series moves slowly: any single quarter's trades are a small fraction of the stock, and Valulor treats large quarter-over-quarter moves in Burnaby as data quality questions before treating them as market signals.

Valulor tracks 33 lenders active against Burnaby's 6,900 commercial buildings, producing a Lender Density Score of 48. Expressed differently, there is roughly one tracked Burnaby lender for every 209 commercial buildings in the market. Density is a valuation input, not a footnote: markets where the score is low price wider because a single lender withdrawing changes the clearing price.

A Burnaby density score of 48 means the financing market is quotable but not commoditised. With 33 lenders tracked here, the realistic outcome is three or four genuine quotes on a $7,200,000 deal, and the pricing difference between them is material enough to change the equity return.

The financing side also explains why Burnaby bands widen at the bottom of the market rather than at the top. When credit tightens, the Burnaby buyer who needed 65 percent leverage disappears before the buyer who needed 50 percent does, and the marginal bid that used to set the Burnaby price is the one that goes missing. That is why Valulor publishes a low, mid and high for every Burnaby asset class instead of a point estimate.

Valulor publishes 24 British Columbia markets, and Burnaby should be read against them rather than in isolation. The nearest comparison set includes Vancouver (tier 1), Surrey (tier 1), Victoria (tier 2), Richmond (tier 2). Vancouver is the largest British Columbia market on the roster at 662,248 residents, and the yield distance between it and Burnaby is the clearest measure of what tier really costs a seller here.

Cross-market comparison is where valuation errors surface fastest. If a Burnaby asset is being priced at a yield that belongs to a larger British Columbia market, the difference is either a genuine quality premium or an unsupported assumption, and the British Columbia ladder makes it obvious which.

Tier discipline runs through this comparison. Tier 3 British Columbia markets carry anchor asset classes only, because Valulor will not publish an office or hospitality page for a market that cannot support a defensible band. Burnaby sits at tier 2, so it carries the fuller set of 4 published bands.

Start with net operating income, not with the asking price. Enter the Burnaby asset's stabilised NOI into the valuator, select the asset class, and read the three values the Burnaby band produces. The mid is the number to negotiate from; the low and high are the numbers to justify. On an average Burnaby deal of $7,200,000, the difference between the low and high value is the entire negotiation.

Then test the sensitivity. Re-run the Burnaby valuation at the band low and at the band high, and if the deal only works at the tight end, you are relying on Burnaby liquidity that the 33 tracked lenders here may not supply on the day you need it.

Finally, carry the result forward. The valuation you build for a Burnaby asset travels with you across the network as a shared deal object, so the value, NOI, gross floor area, asset class and the burnaby-bc market tag are already filled in on the next tool you open. Nothing is stored and no account is created — the Burnaby deal lives in the link.

Not advice — Valulor is a data publisher. Every figure here is an indicated value produced by published capitalisation math from inputs you supply — not an AACI, MAI or otherwise accredited opinion of value, not an appraisal, and not advice. Lenders, courts and tax authorities require an appraisal from a licensed appraiser; confirm any number here before you rely on it. About Valulor