Yes partly that, and probably now with some additional wealthy mainland Chinese, and a lot of them don't even live there, but are holding the houses in reserve in case they decide to move, or as offshore investments, so they have jacked up prices for everybody else. You'll see in the link I posted that the the recent price drop might have beeh partly due to a new foreign buyer tax to address this issue, but they're still pretty high. The other problem is that the fairly flat land of the city is hemmed in by mountains, so it is difficult and expensive to build outwards.

http://silverladylimo.com/wp-content...-vancouver.jpg