Pouce Coupe

Lending in Pouce Coupe, BC

Don’t mistake Pouce Coupe for a suburb of Dawson Creek. It’s a distinct village with its own history, a place with deep Francophone and Indigenous roots that give it a different feel than other towns in the Peace River region. It’s quiet, rural, and not exactly a growth market—the population has actually dropped by almost 4% since 2016. Think of it as the kind of place the railway passed through on its way to somewhere bigger. For us, that slow pace defines our lending strategy.

The economic picture here is what really makes us cautious. This is a resource town, plain and simple. Mining, quarrying, oil, and gas account for nearly 20% of all jobs, with another 17% in construction. That kind of dependence on volatile sectors is a huge red flag. Combine that with a 16.9% unemployment rate, and you have a recipe for risk. When the energy sector catches a cold, places like Pouce Coupe get pneumonia. A respectable median household income of $86,000 doesn’t change the fact that the economy isn’t diversified. Our underwriting has to assume a worst-case scenario where a downturn guts local employment, evaporates the buyer pool, and hits property values hard.

The housing market is another piece of the puzzle. The inventory is almost entirely single-detached homes—nearly 90% of it. While that points to a stable community of long-term residents, it also means market liquidity is low. People don’t move often, so very few properties turn over in a given year. For a lender, that spells trouble in a forced-sale situation. If we have to foreclose, we’re looking at a small pool of potential buyers and a long timeline. Our projection is an 8 to 10-month sales period, and even then, we’d likely have to sell at a discount. Pouce Coupe just doesn’t have broad appeal; the harsh climate and limited amenities mean it isn’t attracting retirees or a flood of new families.

Putting it all together—the reliance on a single volatile industry, the alarmingly high unemployment, and a housing market that’s thin and slow—our approach has to be conservative. There’s a place for us here, but our exposure must be limited to protect our position. For any deal in Pouce Coupe, our maximum loan-to-value is 50% LTV. That number isn’t arbitrary; it’s a direct reflection of the time and money we’d expect to spend to get our capital back if a loan goes bad in this market.