Lillooet

Lending in Lillooet

Lillooet isn’t a place you can assess with a generic rural BC scorecard. It’s not a resort feeder town or a quiet retirement community in the traditional sense. It’s a town with a very specific economic and demographic profile that demands a disciplined lending approach. The data reveals a community that is stable but not growing, with a small, self-contained economy and an illiquid property market. For brokers bringing us deals here, understanding this context is the first step.

Look at the employment numbers. There are no major industrial employers driving growth. The economy is anchored by the public sector, with healthcare and education providing the most jobs, followed by retail and construction. While this provides a floor for employment, it also signals limited private sector dynamism. The median household income is $66,000, and the unemployment rate is 8.4%. This isn’t a market flush with high-income earners or diverse job opportunities. The reliance on government-funded roles creates a vulnerability; any disruption to public funding could have an outsized impact here. That economic fragility directly influences our assessment of a borrower’s stability and the local market’s ability to absorb a property in a foreclosure scenario.

The demographics tell the same story. Lillooet is an aging community, with a median age of 54.4. Nearly a third of the population is over 65, while only 11% are under 14. This profile suggests very little organic growth from new household formation, which is a key driver of housing demand. The housing stock itself is mostly what we like to see: nearly 70% of dwellings are single-detached homes. However, there’s also a notable 11% of movable dwellings, which can affect neighbourhood valuations. The bigger issue is liquidity. In a town of 2,300 people with a specific buyer profile—someone committed to a remote, rugged lifestyle—a home will take much longer to sell than one in Vernon. The buyer pool is shallow, and it’s not being replenished by an influx of lifestyle buyers from the Lower Mainland.

All of this flows directly into our risk model. We are active in Lillooet, but our approach is necessarily conservative. For us, every deal comes down to the exit strategy and the time required to recover our investors’ capital in a worst-case scenario. The market’s limited liquidity and economic profile mean we need a larger equity cushion. That’s why our maximum LTV in Lillooet is 55.0%. This buffer isn’t arbitrary; it’s calculated to account for longer sales timelines, potentially higher carrying costs, and the risk of price softness in a small market. The deals that work here are for borrowers with significant equity who aren’t over-leveraged. It’s a market we understand well, but one where protecting principal remains our first and last consideration.