A warning about moving to the Sunshine Coast, BC
It isn't all butterflies and rainbows
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There’s a lot to love about living on BC’s Sunshine Coast but we’re sometimes told that we paint too rosy a picture about what life is actually like. While we think there’s more good than bad, here are four negative things to consider before relocating to the Sunshine Coast.
1. Housing is expensive
When we moved to the Sunshine Coast in 2014, the average detached home was $360,000. When we made this video in July 2023, it had climbed to a whopping $917,000. Vancouver's prices are even higher, with detached homes often exceeding $2M, which means if you're leaving the city for the Sunshine Coast, our prices seem downright affordable. But if you’re relocating from a city with a normal real estate market, you’ll be shocked by our housing prices.
The situation is also challenging for tenants. Rents are high and there's little stability. When landlords sell their properties, tenants often find themselves scrambling for a new place. Not only is rent high, but frequent moves add to the cost (and stress) of being a tenant on the Sunshine Coast, BC.
2. Hard to find a doctor
Healthcare on the Sunshine Coast, like many places in Canada, is at full capacity. There’s a big recruiting push to attract doctors to the Sunshine Coast but despite what should be an easy sell, the high cost of housing poses a significant issue, even for well-paid professionals. Because healthcare professionals have a hard time finding affordable accommodations, Sunshine Coasters have a hard time finding a family doctor.
Now, that said, if you’re a healthcare professional and you’re even casually considering relocating, it’s worth your time to check out BC’s Sunshine Coast. The weather is great, people are friendly, and there’s no prettier place in Canada to live.
3. Expect ferry delays
While we personally don't make frequent ferry trips to Vancouver, many locals do, and the service has become increasingly unreliable. The ferries themselves are past their prime and staff can be hard to find because of our cost of housing. (Noticing a theme?)
Ferry reservations have become essential even for midweek, off-season trips. During peak times, the system can often become overloaded. Long weekends in the summer can be particularly chaotic. It’s not unheard of for travelers to have multiple sailing waits because of the volume of people visiting the Sunshine Coast.
The ferry service's unreliability affects everything from personal travel to commuting to the transport of goods and construction materials. If you move to the Sunshine Coast, you’ll need to make peace with waiting for the ferry.
4. Tough on novice business owners
Running a business on the Sunshine Coast is a tightrope walk. Commercial rents are high and finding staff is a significant challenge due to (say it with me) the high cost of housing. The business climate here is highly seasonal, with summer bringing big crowds while winter slows to a crawl.
Many people romanticize the idea of owning a business in a quaint seaside town, but the reality is being an entrepreneur on the Sunshine Coast requires tons of preparation and an excellent business plan. You need to understand our local demographics and seasonality, and plan for staffing challenges. Businesses managed by knowledgeable, experience operators can thrive, but there’s a harsh learning curve for newbies.
The Sunshine Coast is still awesome!
Despite those complaints, there’s no place we’d rather live than on BC’s Sunshine Coast. The weather is mild, the surroundings are beautiful, and the pace of life is more civilized.
If we haven’t scared you out of relocating to the Sunshine Coast, know that the window of affordability is closing. In summer of 2024, our local real estate market is slow with prices softening each month so there’s not quite the urgency to buy that there was a few years ago. But we believe that the long-term pricing trend is up.
Selling a house on the prairies and buying here was feasible when we moved a decade ago, but even with our current soft market, your housing dollars won’t go as far as they used to. You can still sell a normal house in a normal city and use the proceeds to buy a townhouse or a condo in Gibsons or Sechelt, but you’re likely priced out of single family homes. In 5 to 10 years time, we think breaking into the Sunshine Coast market with less than a million dollars will be very difficult.
Connect with Val & Paul
We're Val and Paul and we're a married couple who live on BC's Sunshine Coast! We moved from Alberta to Gibsons in 2014 and love our life on Canada's West Coast! Subscribe to our YouTube channel and email newsletter and you'll learn what it's like to live in the most beautiful place in Canada.
Val Labrecque is a REALTOR® with RE/MAX City Realty Gibsons.