Oak Bay Fought Density for a Decade. Here's What Got Built Anyway.

For a hundred years, Oak Bay ran on one rule that mattered more than the rest: nothing changes. That rule is gone — and the brand-new fourplexes, triplexes and townhouses going up across Estevan, Henderson and South Oak Bay are the result.

What changed: Bill 44 took away the veto

In 2023, BC passed Bill 44. On almost any lot that previously allowed a single house or a duplex, local governments now have to permit three to four units — townhouses, triplexes, fourplexes — as of right. As of right means council doesn't get to vote.

The thing Oak Bay was best at in the entire province — the slow no, the design review, the quiet delay — was removed for this category of housing. Oak Bay wrote the strictest version it was allowed: tighter setbacks, lower heights, smaller lot coverage. It still wasn't enough. After the district missed its targets, the province ordered further changes. The veto was gone.

by the numbers

The figures Oak Bay would rather you skimmed

What's actually being built

Walk the projects and a pattern emerges fast. A four-home ICF development on Bowker. Henderson Heights and Henderson Park. 4Oaks on Allenby. A triplex on the Lansdowne slope, sitting directly against the Uplands estates. A triplex on Mountjoy with units near 2,450 square feet each.

Notice what's missing: anything small. These are executive townhomes with private elevators, Miele kitchens and completion incentives — listing between roughly $1.25 million and $2.0 million.

Good or bad for Oak Bay?

It depends entirely on who you ask, and both sides have a real point. If you've lived here forty years, a three-storey building beside a 1920s house feels like a rule got broken, and the scale concerns aren't imaginary. If you're a family that grew up here and got priced out a decade ago, this is the first daylight you've seen. We won't settle that for you — but pretending it's all upside, or all loss, is the one position the facts don't support.

The bottom line

Oak Bay spent a century perfecting the art of no. The thing that finally changed it wasn't a vote, a protest, or a change of heart. It was a law that took the vote away. The most exclusive corner of the Island is becoming, slowly, a slightly more ordinary kind of place — and for the right buyer, that's an opening worth understanding before the rest of the market catches up.

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Figures are directional benchmarks from Repliers MLS, BC Assessment and the Victoria Real Estate Board, not an appraisal. Policy details current as of publication.