Relocation

How to Move to Vancouver Island

Published 7 August 2026. Market figures current to June 2026.

Most people who move here do the steps in the wrong order. They fall for a house before they know what their own home is worth, or they book a four day visit in August and decide on the strength of one good week of weather. The move itself is not hard. The sequence is where it goes wrong.

This page lays out the order we would put a move in if it were ours, and it is the order we walk people through when they call us from Calgary or Coquitlam or Regina. We sell real estate in Nanaimo and the nearby communities, so we have watched a few hundred of these go smoothly and a few go badly. The difference is almost never the house.

What is the right order to move to Vancouver Island?

Here is the whole sequence, with what each step is really for.

1. Narrow the community. Vancouver Island is roughly 460 kilometres long. Deciding you want to live on it is not a decision. Nanaimo, Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Ladysmith, Lantzville and Cedar are different places with different prices, different commutes and different amounts of quiet. Pick two or three to compare properly, and rule the rest out.
2. Find out what your home is really worth. Not the number a neighbour got in 2022. A current opinion of value from an agent in your own market, in writing. Everything downstream depends on this number and people routinely carry an out of date one for months.
3. Arrange the financing. Talk to a broker or lender who works in BC. If you are carrying a mortgage in another province, ask specifically about portability and about bridge financing, because those two answers shape your whole timeline.
4. Come and look. Longer than a weekend, and ideally not in July. More on this below.
5. Decide your sequence. Sell first or buy first. This is the fork that determines how much stress the rest of the move carries.
6. Then shop. By this point you know the community, the number, the financing and the sequence. Now looking at listings is useful instead of just entertaining.

Steps one through three can all be done from your kitchen table before you spend a dollar on a flight. Most people skip straight to step six because that is the fun part, and then spend three months undoing it.

Should you sell your home before you buy on Vancouver Island?

The case for selling first is that you know your exact number, you can move quickly when the right place comes up, and you are not carrying two properties. The cost is that you may have nowhere to live for a stretch, which usually means a short term rental and a storage unit.

The case for buying first is that you get the specific house you want rather than whatever is available when your money lands. The cost is real: you are either carrying two mortgages or leaning on bridge financing, and if your home back home sells for less than you assumed, the squeeze lands on your new purchase.

What we see most often, and what tends to work, is a middle path. People sell, then rent here for three to six months while they look properly. That sounds like an expensive detour and it does cost money. It also means you are buying a house in a place you now actually know, in whatever season you happen to be in, without a closing date pushing you into a decision. More than a few people have told us the rental period was the best money they spent on the move.

One practical note that surprises people from other provinces: British Columbia has public sold price data. You can look up what homes actually sold for rather than guessing from asking prices. That makes it much easier to sanity check what you are being told about value.

What does a home in Nanaimo cost right now?

Property type	Benchmark price
Single family detached (Nanaimo)	$816,400
Townhouse (board-wide)	$549,400
Condominium (board-wide)	$408,000

Source: Nanaimo single-family benchmark; board-wide townhouse and condo (VIREB MLS® Home Price Index, June 2026). Benchmark price describes a typical home of that type rather than an average of what sold.

Benchmark is a more useful number than average because it is not thrown off by a few unusual sales in a given month. It still will not tell you what any particular house costs. A 1970s rancher on a quiet street in a well established neighbourhood and a new build twenty minutes north are both detached homes and they are not remotely the same purchase.

The nearby communities do not track Nanaimo exactly. Parksville and Qualicum Beach have their own pricing and their own inventory, generally weighted toward buyers who are past raising children. If you are comparing, compare the actual communities rather than assuming an Island wide number applies.

What are the closing costs when you buy in British Columbia?

This is the line item that catches out of province buyers most often, because it is a provincial tax and the rules are not the same as the ones you are used to. Budget for it separately from your down payment. Your notary or lawyer collects it at closing.

There are exemptions, though most people relocating here will not qualify for the main one. The first time home buyer exemption applies in full below 835,000 dollars and partially up to 860,000 dollars, and it requires that you have never owned a principal residence anywhere. If you are selling a home to fund this purchase, that rules you out. There is a separate exemption for newly built homes, full below 1.1 million dollars, which is worth asking about if you are considering new construction.

On top of that, budget for legal fees, a home inspection, moving costs, and if you are buying a condo or townhouse, the cost of having the strata documents reviewed. That last one is not optional in our view and it is covered properly in the Strata Explained guide above.

When does your health coverage start after you move to BC?

Arrive in March and you are looking at coverage starting 1 June. That gap is the single most common administrative mistake we see people make, because nothing about it is intuitive if you have never changed provinces before.

Two things make it easy to handle. Apply immediately rather than waiting until the end of the wait period, since processing takes a few weeks and applying early costs you nothing. And if you are coming from elsewhere in Canada, arrange with your former provincial plan to keep covering you during the wait. If you are coming from outside Canada, that gap needs private insurance.

Finding a family doctor is a separate question and a harder one. It is a real constraint here and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The Health Care guide covers how people are actually going about it, including the provincial registry and what the walk in and urgent care picture looks like.

How long should your first visit be, and when should you come?

A week if you can manage it. Four days tells you almost nothing except whether you liked your hotel.

Come in the shoulder seasons or in winter. Late October through February is when this place shows you what it actually is. The summers here sell themselves and everybody who visits in August falls for it, which is exactly the problem. If you come in November and still want to live here, you have real information.

While you are here, do ordinary things rather than tourist things. Buy groceries. Drive the commute you would be driving on a Tuesday at 8am. Sit in a coffee shop on a wet Wednesday and see whether the town feels like somewhere you belong or somewhere you are visiting. Walk the same neighbourhood twice, once in daylight and once after dark.

And drive the distances yourself instead of trusting the map. Twenty minutes on the Island can feel like nothing or can feel like a real commitment depending on the road, the season and whether you are behind a logging truck.

What do people get wrong about the weather here?

Two things, in opposite directions.

The first is underestimating the winter. It is mild, and it is grey and wet from November into March. Snow is occasional rather than routine. If you are coming from the prairies you will find the winter dramatically easier and you may still find the darkness harder than you expected, because those are different problems.

The second is assuming the rain shadow covers more than it does. The dry pocket on this coast sits behind Mount Arrowsmith, which is why Parksville and Qualicum Beach are noticeably drier than places further south. That effect is real and it is also local. Do not assume it applies wherever you happen to be looking.

Summers are dry, often genuinely so, and water restrictions in July and August are normal rather than an emergency.

How do you get on and off the Island?

Three ways, and which one matters depends entirely on how often you plan to leave.

BC Ferries runs vehicle service from two Nanaimo terminals, Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay and Duke Point to Tsawwassen. Reservations in summer are not optional if you have somewhere to be.

Hullo runs a passenger only ferry between Nanaimo and downtown Vancouver, from 100 Port Way here to 1055 Canada Place there, with a free shuttle from the Nanaimo terminal. If your trips off Island are meetings and appointments rather than hauling things, this changes the calculation considerably.

Nanaimo Airport handles the flights. It is small, it is close, and the difference between a fifteen minute drive to your gate and the Vancouver airport experience is worth something if you fly regularly.

The thing nobody tells you: whichever option you pick, leaving the Island takes planning in a way that leaving a mainland city does not. Most people adjust to this within a year and stop noticing. A few never do, and those are the people who move back.

What should you do in your first month here?

• Apply for MSP the week you arrive, before you unpack.
• Get your BC driver's licence and register your vehicle. ICBC handles both insurance and licensing here, which works differently from a private insurance province.
• Set up utilities, and if you are outside city limits, confirm what your water and septic situation actually is.
• Get on the provincial family doctor registry even though the wait is long. The wait does not start until you are on it.
• Find your nearest urgent and primary care centre before you need it.
• Meet your neighbours. Small thing, and in a smaller community it does more work than it does in a city.

Common questions about moving to Vancouver Island

Written by Kiel Bach, REALTOR, PREC and Travis Bach, REALTOR, of Bach Real Estate Group in Nanaimo, British Columbia. We work with buyers relocating to Nanaimo and the nearby communities from across Canada.