District of North Vancouver

How geography shapes this market

The District of North Vancouver is basically defined by its landscape. Squeezed between the Pacific waters and the steep slopes of the North Shore mountains, it wraps around the smaller, more urban City of North Vancouver. It is a wealthy, heavily forested suburb of about 88,000 people who live there specifically to be near the trails. In spots like Deep Cove, Lynn Valley, and Upper Capilano, you mostly find single family homes and world-class mountain biking routes.

For developers, this terrain is a nightmare. You cannot build on most of the land because of watershed protections, landslide hazards, and sheer cliffs. Because there is no room to expand outward, any new housing has to come from infill projects, knocking down old homes to build bigger ones, or low-rise buildings in hubs like Maplewood or Lynn Creek. That lack of land, paired with high-performing schools and easy access to the mountains, keeps home prices incredibly high.

A market for end users

For mortgage brokers, this is a classic end-user market. You are usually dealing with high-earning professionals commuting across the bridges into downtown Vancouver, or long-time owners borrowing against their massive home equity to fund a major renovation. Because it is a stable, low-vacancy area, local credit unions, major banks, and plenty of Vancouver private lenders are always competing for these deals.

Where we fit in

Which is exactly why Tekamar does not lend here.

We are a mortgage investment corporation based in Salmon Arm. We pool money from friends and family to offer straightforward equity loans, like bridge financing or second mortgages. But we have a strict rule: we only lend outside of Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. We built our business by being the lender for the rest of BC — from mid-sized cities like Victoria and Kelowna down to small interior towns without a single traffic light.

The District of North Vancouver is a great real estate market, but it sits outside our sandbox. We only put capital into the regional, interior, and northern markets where we actually know the streets. That means our maximum LTV in the District of North Vancouver is 0%.

If you have a client in Lynn Valley or Deep Cove who needs a private mortgage, you will have to send that deal to a Lower Mainland lender. But if those same clients want to pull equity out of their North Shore home to buy a cabin in the Okanagan, a rental in the Kootenays, or some land in the Cariboo, that is when you call us.