This article is about the metropolitan region of Richmond, British Columbia. As a realtor, I created a data chart to show the real estate market of recent years.

Richmond’s population as of January 1, 2008 was 188,100. It is the fourth largest city in British Columbia, after Vancouver (605,891), Surrey (420,900) and Burnaby (193,954).

Richmond has an immigrant population of 59%, the highest in Canada. More than half of its population is of Asian descent, many of whom immigrated in the early 1990s, most of them from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. Other Asian Canadians in Richmond include Indo-Canadians, Filipino Canadians and Japanese Canadians, the latter having a long history in Steveston dating back to the 1800s. The Japanese Canadian community was devastated following the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan in 1941: the Japanese Canadians were relocated to internment camps in the BC Interior and Alberta and their property was auctioned off. Richmond is also home to two of the largest Buddhist temples in North America, the International Buddhist Temple and the Lingyen Mountain Buddhist Temple.

According to Statistics Canada, residents of Richmond have the greatest life expectancy in Canada at 83.4 years, and the lowest obesity and smoking rates as well. The average price of a detached home in Richmond is $758,915. Serious violent crime is very rare in Richmond, and Richmond was ranked as the third safest city in British Columbia for 2002.