A Tale of Three Houses, a Football Team, and the Bank of Canada: What They Say About Chilliwack Real Estate in Fall 2026

By Matt Paisley | The Welcome Matt | September 2026

Est. reading time: 7-8 minutes

Today is a stacked day at my house.

It is my 26th wedding anniversary. It is the unofficial end of summer. Our football team plays its first game of the season on Friday. And at 6:45 this morning, Pacific time, the Bank of Canada announced its latest rate decision, which means that on the morning of my anniversary, the entire Canadian mortgage industry was refreshing a webpage while I was trying to remember what time dinner is at The Keg tonight.

The Bank held at 2.25 percent. Seventh consecutive hold, a stretch that now runs back to December of last year. Every one of the 35 economists Reuters surveyed called it. If you have a variable rate mortgage, nothing happened to you today.

So on the surface, the most watched non-event of the fall real estate kick-off went exactly as advertised.

Except the hold was not really the news. The language was. And that is a better setup than the one I had planned for what I actually want to write about this week. Because the longer I do this job, and the longer I do the other things in my life that matter more than this job, the more convinced I become that the single biggest mistake people make in real estate is judging a long game by a single day.

You do not judge a marriage by one morning. You do not judge a football season by one game. And you should not judge a housing decision by one rate announcement.

Let me show you what I mean. It takes three houses to do it.

House Number One: The One We Could Afford

Twenty-six years ago my wife and I bought our first home in what I will politely call an absolutely abhorrent neighbourhood. It was not a compromise. It was the only option. It was what we could afford, so that is what we bought.

Break-ins were common. Finding drug paraphernalia on the front lawn was a regular enough occurrence that it stopped being shocking. This was not the starter home from the magazines. This was the entry point, and we took it because the alternative was not entering at all.

Here is what that house did for us. We got it for a song because nobody else wanted the street. We lived our newlywed years there, we built equity while our friends paid rent, and when our son was born we made the decision that no amount of equity was worth him growing up finding needles on the lawn. So we sold. And because we had bought so cheap, we walked away with real money at exactly the moment our life needed it.

That house was never the dream. It was the down payment on the dream. If we had waited for a better house in a better area at a rate we liked, we might have waited years and entered the market at much higher prices. Instead we bought the ugly thing we could afford and let time do the heavy lifting.

House Number Two: The Stepping Stone

The second house had one job: quality of life for a young family. Big backyard. Split level with room to spread out. Quiet street. Safe, private, central.

To get all of that on our budget, we bought on First Nations lease land. Plenty of people warned us off it at the time. Lease land makes some buyers nervous, financing can be more complicated, and the conventional wisdom said it was a compromise.

It was the best five-year decision we ever made. It gave our young family exactly the setting we needed during exactly the years we needed it, at a price that did not strangle us. It was never meant to be forever. It was a stepping stone, and we always knew it, and when its job was done we moved on without regret.

I think about that house every time a buyer tells me they are waiting for the perfect property. The second house was not perfect. It was perfect for a five-year window, which is a completely different thing, and recognizing that difference is half of what the long game is.

House Number Three: The One We Are Still In

Eighteen years ago we bought the house we live in now. The priorities had shifted again. This time it was neighbourhood, proximity to the school, walkability, close to the kids' friends, and extra room to grow into. We gave up the big yard and the privacy to get it. Another trade. Another season of life, another set of priorities.

Part of that extra room was a 1,200 square foot basement that sat essentially unused for the better part of two decades. If you have been reading this blog since April, you know how that story ends. The kids moved out, the basement became a legal rental suite, and as of a few weeks ago there is a tenant living down there generating income from square footage that spent eighteen years holding boxes.

Nobody could have told me in 2008 that the spare basement would one day become the retirement-adjacent revenue stream that let us stay in the neighbourhood we love instead of downsizing into a declining market. That was not the plan. That is the point. The long game does not require you to predict the future. It requires you to hold good assets through enough seasons that the future has room to surprise you.

Three houses in 26 years. A rough one that built the equity. A stepping stone that raised the kids. A keeper that is now paying us back. Not one of those decisions was made because of what a central bank did on a Wednesday morning.

What 31 Years of Football Has to Do With Chilliwack Real Estate in Fall 2026

We just wrapped our end-of-summer training camp, and our first game is Friday night.

After 31 years of coaching, the start of a season feels different than it used to. Preparations do not take as long. Scouting opponents is easier. The game has slowed down in my head, which is what happens when you have seen enough seasons that most situations are ones you have already lived through. Younger coaches react. Old coaches recognize.

I will be honest about something else too. I can see the end of the coaching road from here. Not soon. But for the first time, the idea of handing the reins to another coach does not feel like a foreign concept. I am getting older, the players keep not getting older, and the gruff no-nonsense routine that worked for decades is starting to feel a little played out even to me.

And yet. This season feels different in the other direction too. The depth, the talent, and the commitment level of this group is something I have not seen since 2021, which is the last time we won a provincial championship. I am trying not to get ahead of myself. I am absolutely getting ahead of myself.

Here is the real estate connection, and it is not a stretch. A championship season is not built in September. It is built across years of kids showing up, systems staying consistent, and a program surviving the seasons where nothing seemed to be happening. The market works the same way. Chilliwack real estate has spent two years in a season where nothing seemed to be happening. Prices flat to down, sales slow, everyone waiting. But underneath the quiet, the fundamentals have been quietly stacking: affordability at its best levels since 2019, a firming job market with 75,000 jobs added nationally in July, second quarter growth that came in well ahead of what the Bank of Canada projected, and a fall market that historically wakes up right about now.

You cannot see a championship coming by watching one practice. You can see it coming by watching the depth chart build. The same is true here.

The Part of This Morning That Actually Mattered

Now back to that announcement, because there is something in it you should know about.

The hold was expected. What caught people's attention was how Macklem framed the road ahead. He pointed to the continuing Middle East conflict keeping energy prices elevated, and to new US tariffs and Canadian counter-measures following the breakdown of trade talks. He was direct about the limits of his own toolkit, saying that monetary policy cannot offset the effects of tariffs or influence global energy prices.

Inflation has been running near 3 percent, a full point above target, driven mostly by fuel. Core inflation is sitting right around 2 percent where the Bank wants it. So the Bank is watching a headline number it does not control, caused by a war it cannot influence.

Economists came out of the announcement reading a lean toward hikes rather than cuts. Capital Economics said a hike at the December meeting is now on the table if oil prices stay where they are. National Bank and Scotiabank are both forecasting increases, to 2.50 percent in October and 2.75 percent by December. The Reuters poll found nearly half of economists expect at least one increase by the middle of 2027. The next decision comes October 28, alongside a fresh Monetary Policy Report.

I want to be careful here, because I am not in the business of manufacturing urgency and I never have been. Forecasts are wrong constantly. Two of six big banks calling for hikes means four are not. Nobody knows.

But if you have spent two years sitting on the sidelines waiting for the rate cut that finally makes your move obvious, this morning was worth paying attention to. Not because rates went up. They did not. Because the central bank spent its statement talking about inflation risks to the upside rather than about relief coming.

What to Actually Do With Any of This

There will be no morning where the Bank of Canada rings a bell and declares it safe to buy a house.

That is the whole point. There was no bell in any of the 26 years and three houses I just described. There was only ever a series of imperfect decisions made for the right reasons in the right season of life, held long enough for time to do its work. We bought an ugly house on a bad street because it was what we could afford. We bought lease land because it got us a yard for our kids. We bought this place for the schools and the walkability and ended up with a basement that now pays part of our mortgage.

Not one of those was a market call. All of them worked out.

The fall market is waking up. Inventory in Chilliwack is still elevated, prices are still well below their 2022 peak, and the buyers who move this fall will be negotiating in a market that still favours them. Whether that stays true through next spring depends on things none of us control, including a war and a trade dispute.

The people who look back in ten years and feel smart will not be the ones who nailed the timing of a rate announcement. They will be the ones who bought the right house for the season of life they were actually in.

I checked the announcement this morning out of professional habit. Then I closed the laptop and said happy anniversary to the person who bought an ugly house in a bad neighbourhood with me 26 years ago and never once asked what the overnight rate was. Tonight we are going to The Keg, where I have been instructed that no market commentary of any kind will be permitted at the table. Fair enough.

Friday night we kick off. Big expectations. If you are at the game, come say hello.

And if you are trying to figure out what season of the long game you are in, and what the right house for it looks like, I am easy to reach. No pitch. Just the conversation.

Matt Paisley | The Welcome Matt Fraser Valley Real Estate | Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Langley, Mission, Hope and Agassiz 📱 [604-991-5028] 🌐 thewelcomematt.ca

Market data referenced in this post reflects Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board statistics for June & July 2026. This post is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or real estate advice specific to your situation.