South Victoria

3 neighbourhoods along the Juan de Fuca shore and the hill above it, and the most expensive ground in the city. Fairfield runs from downtown's edge to the Dallas Road cliffs with Beacon Hill Park in the middle of it, is the largest of the twelve at 253.8 hectares, and is one of three over a million on the 2026 assessment roll at $1,006,000, below Gonzales at $1,350,000 and Rockland at $1,433,000. Gonzales holds the large lots above Ross Bay and the highest median household income in Victoria at $96,000, with two thirds of its households owning and just over half its dwellings detached. Rockland is the estate district, built on Dunsmuir coal money and now full of subdivided mansions and consulates; its median assessment of $1,433,000 is the highest in the city, and the highest single value on the roll there is $154 million.

Two things to check before falling for an address here, and one to budget for. The first is that a great deal of the stock is pre-1960: 66 per cent of Gonzales's dwellings, 54 per cent of Rockland's and 42 per cent of Fairfield's, which makes knob-and-tube, oil tanks, perimeter drains and heritage designations live questions rather than hypotheticals. The second is that the walk to the water is often further than the map suggests, because the streets do not run straight down the hill. The thing to budget for is the province's additional school tax, which applies at 0.2 per cent above $3 million and 0.4 per cent above $4 million. Rockland is where it starts to bite.