Surrey

Let’s be clear about Surrey. It’s not a town, it’s a powerhouse. With over 568,000 people and a 9.7% growth rate in just five years, it’s on track to become BC’s biggest city. It’s huge, diverse, and constantly changing. The economy is solid—spread across retail, healthcare, and construction, so it’s not a one-industry town. The housing is a mix of everything from single-family homes and duplexes to low-rise apartments, serving a wide range of people.

And that’s exactly why we don’t lend there.

Tekamar’s entire model is built for the rest of British Columbia—the markets outside the intense capital concentration of Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Surrey sits at the epicentre of the region we’ve deliberately carved out of our lending map. The market there is a different beast entirely. It’s saturated with A-lenders, B-lenders, and large-scale MICs built to compete on the tight margins and high transaction volumes of a major urban centre. That’s not our sandbox. We do our best work in communities where local knowledge can solve a problem that the big banks can’t or won’t touch.

Our risk philosophy is the other reason we stay out. Every loan we fund comes from investors who are our friends and family, and our first duty is to protect their principal. Lending in the Lower Mainland is a different risk calculation. Even with a diversified economy, Surrey’s 8.6% unemployment rate is a flag for us. On top of that, while liquidity is high, so is the complexity. The speed of the market, the foreclosure timelines, and the legal costs just don’t fit our safety-first approach. We’ll stick to the markets we know inside and out—from the Island to the Okanagan—where we can accurately price risk without the background noise of a metro market.

For these reasons, brokers should know that any deal within Surrey’s municipal boundaries is outside our lending area. It’s not a knock on the community or its real estate—it’s about staying disciplined and sticking to what we do best. We stick to our lane, which is the rest of BC.

Our maximum loan-to-value in Surrey is 0.0%.