Terrace

Let’s be clear about Terrace: it’s not a resort town or a quiet retirement outpost. It’s the functional, working hub for an enormous piece of northwest British Columbia. Situated at the confluence of the Skeena, Kitimat, and Kitsumkalum valleys, this is the service and commercial center for the entire Kitimat-Stikine Regional District. If you have a deal here, you’re not dealing with a speculative market. You’re dealing with a community built on necessity and sustained by its geography.

On paper, the economy looks like a standard service hub. Healthcare and social assistance employ 18% of the workforce, with another 12% in retail. That’s the stable base. But that service sector exists for one reason: to support the resource industries that define this part of the province. While forestry isn’t the giant it once was—there’s only one major sawmill left operating—it, along with mining and the heavy industry down the highway in Kitimat, still drives the regional economy. This gives Terrace a dual personality: a stable service-based employment core with an undercurrent of resource-cycle risk. It’s not a boom-and-bust camp, but it’s not insulated from commodity prices either.

The demographics paint a clear picture of a working town. The median age is 38, and with 65% of the population in their prime working years, this is a community focused on employment. The housing market reflects this reality. Forget condo towers; 60% of the homes here are single-detached houses. People come here to work, put down roots, and raise families. The population has been growing slowly but steadily, up just over 3% since 2016, which points to stability rather than speculative frenzy. With a median household income of $90,000, it’s a middle-class, practical market.

The city’s identity is tied to its location on the unceded traditional territories of the Ts’msyen people. The relationship with the neighboring Kitselas and Kitsumkalum First Nations is a defining feature of the community, not just a historical note. You see it woven into the local culture. Add in generations of settlers, including a long-established Sikh community originally drawn by the sawmills, and you get the diverse, grounded population that exists today.

From a lending perspective, Terrace presents a straightforward risk profile. Demand is driven by local jobs, not a vacation-home rush. The city’s geography on a series of glacial terraces physically limits sprawl, which provides a natural check on over-development. We see it as a solid, core market—exactly the kind of real town, with a real economy, that we’re set up to serve outside the Lower Mainland. The fundamentals are sound, and its role as a regional hub gives it a durable economic floor. Still, given the resource exposure and its distance from major urban centres, we remain prudent. Our maximum loan-to-value in Terrace is 65.0%.