As CHEK News reported, Saanich Mayor Dean Murdock said: "Because it's being proposed by a non-profit housing provider, it will be prioritized in the internal review process."
He was describing why a 13-unit townhouse development on Feltham Road in Gordon Head was expected to move faster through the district's approval process than a typical rezoning application. He said it in the summer of 2024. The project, Habitat for Humanity Victoria's Ferguson Place, had received final approval the previous week, in a story the Times Colonist ran on September 23, 2026. The timeline from first submission to approval was roughly two years.
For anyone watching Gordon Head for new housing supply, the key point is that a priority-processing commitment does not itself set a predictable arrival date. The neighborhood's new townhome stock is arriving through individual project approvals.
What actually happened on Feltham Road
Habitat for Humanity Victoria bought a 16,000-square-foot lot at 1864 Feltham Road in 2023 with plans to build its largest project to date. The organization submitted its first proposal to Saanich council in June 2024, then resubmitted a revised version later that year. The plan changed shape along the way. Interim CEO Krista Bekkema told Saanich News the team decided the original layout didn't leave enough green space for families, so they adjusted unit sizes to make room for it. The design that emerged is 13 stacked townhomes, six three-bedroom units, three two-bedroom units, and four one-bedroom units, on a $7 million budget.
This isn't open-market inventory. Habitat sells its homes to qualifying partner families through affordable mortgages rather than listing them on MLS. To qualify, a household needs income under $120,000 and has to contribute 500 hours of community service as part of the partnership. CHEK News reported in 2024 that more than 32,000 people were on BC's subsidized housing waitlist at the time, with over 1,000 of those applicants in Victoria and roughly 300 of them families waiting specifically for income-tied housing. Habitat's own project page cites a Saanich housing needs report identifying a shortfall of more than 4,000 homes across the district. Ferguson Place addresses a sliver of that gap, thirteen homes against a four-thousand-home shortfall, and it's not the kind of supply a buyer or investor can shop for.
A second project, same neighborhood, same year
Ferguson Place wasn't the only small-scale multi-unit project moving through Saanich's process in Gordon Head this year. In March 2026, the Times Colonist reported that council endorsed a separate 12-unit townhouse project in the heart of the same neighborhood. That approval landed months before Ferguson Place's final green light, even though Ferguson Place had been in the queue since 2024 and carried an explicit prioritization commitment from the district.
The two projects followed different approval paths. There's too little public detail on the 12-unit project's own application history to compare the timelines fairly. For someone tracking new townhome inventory in Gordon Head, the available examples are two individual project histories, each with its own sequence of council decisions.
Why the timing matters more than usual right now
Here's the part that makes this worth tracking rather than filing away as neighborhood trivia. Greater Victoria's housing market moved in August 2026 in a way that made category-level supply unusually consequential.
The Victoria Real Estate Board reported 591 properties sold across the region in August 2026, up 12.6 percent from August 2025 and the strongest August the board had seen in five years. Sales of single-family homes rose 15.3 percent year over year, to 309 sold, and condo sales rose 15.1 percent, to 175 units. That's a broad jump in activity across both major categories.
Prices didn't move in the same direction as sales, and they didn't move together across categories. In the Victoria Core, the benchmark value for a single-family home was $1,301,800 in August 2026, down from $1,317,200 a year earlier. The benchmark value for a condominium in the same area rose slightly over the same period, to $553,600 from $548,900. Townhouse values, tracked separately in the board's own Home Price Index, were up roughly 1.3 percent year over year as of August 2026, while detached prices softened.
Put plainly, townhomes and condos were benchmark categories gaining ground while sales volume climbed and detached prices eased. That's the backdrop Ferguson Place and the 12-unit Gordon Head project are landing into. When a category is thin, rising, and getting more transaction activity at the same time, each individual project that finally clears approval has an outsized effect on what's actually available to buy or, in Habitat's case, to qualify for. Thirteen income-restricted units and twelve market-rate units arriving in the same neighborhood within the same year is a meaningful addition to a segment where supply has been the binding constraint, even if neither project shows up as a listing a typical buyer can bid on.
What this means if you're watching Gordon Head
If you're comparing Gordon Head against other pockets of Saanich East for a move-up purchase, a downsizing plan, or a small investment, the practical takeaway is to follow specific applications to see how and when new townhome supply progresses. Saanich's own development application pages track projects by neighborhood, and both projects discussed here moved through public hearings and council votes that are matters of record. A buyer with a longer time horizon, someone planning a purchase eighteen months out rather than this quarter, benefits from knowing that even prioritized non-profit housing took about two years from first submission to approval, and that a separate 12-unit townhouse project was endorsed in March 2026.
For someone weighing a purchase in the here and now, the more immediate fact is the one the VREB numbers show directly. Townhouse values held up in August 2026 while detached prices eased; meanwhile, sales activity rose across the single-family and condo categories. That's not a reason to rush a decision. It's a reason to treat any completed, market-ready townhome in this specific part of Saanich East as a scarcer commodity than the sales headlines alone would suggest, and to price your own expectations accordingly rather than benchmarking against a single average.
For builders and small-scale developers, Ferguson Place provides one example of a project timeline in the district: it underwent a design revision and received approval about two years after its first submission. This timeline can be considered alongside standard market-rate applications.
Taken together, the two project histories show separate approval paths for new townhomes in Gordon Head: twenty-five total units cleared Saanich council within the same year.
If you're weighing a purchase, a sale, or an investment in Gordon Head or elsewhere in Saanich East and want a read on how a specific project or listing fits into what's actually available right now, FarupScott Group can walk through the current pipeline with you before you make a decision that depends on supply someone else is still waiting on approval to build.
