Ten - twenty years ago, very few homes in the Lower Mainland were priced at $1,000,000 plus. Over the last 7 years, million dollar homes became commonplace, not because they are actually worth anything close to that but simply because of the market (lots of overseas buyers), the Olympics, the climate, etc. The median price for a home in the Greater Vancouver region is $623,000 (up 7% in the last year), whereas you can buy homes for a fraction of that in other parts of the country without selling off your first born
Nice looking house but my parents bought their place in Vancouver (not suburb of Coquitlam) for $700000 with the same square footage back in 2001. Their latest assessment is well over a million now.