Does this look like your million dollar Kelowna dream home?
Real estate prices are going crazy in the Okanagan and Kamloops regions but a buyer may do a double take when they see Royal LePage realtor Andy Sandhu’s recent listing for a property in the Rutland neighbourhood.
It’s for a 1,300 square foot, single-storey house built in 1940 on two acres of land at 228 Fitzpatrick Road, between Rutland and Stafford Roads in the north end of that neighbourhood.
Valued by B.C. Assessments last June at $252,430, the asking price is a whopping $1.5 million.
“Assessed value doesn’t mean anything,” Sandhu told iNFOnews.ca. “The sellers are just asking whatever they think. Some people want to sell. Some people are just on a fishing expedition and someone might come along and pay it.”
Many properties fetch multiple offers these days, some for tens of thousands of dollars above the asking prices, he noted.
A shortage of new listings is driving prices up all over the region.
In Kamloops, for example, the price of the average home has jumped by more than $100,000 in the past year to $568,557 as sales records are being broken.
READ MORE: Kamloops real estate market deemed a 'seller's dream' as records break
Given such times, the Fitzpatrick Road seller’s asking price is not necessarily out of line.
“In my opinion, that property wouldn’t sell for $1.5 million in normal circumstances,” Sandhu said. “So they think, if they ask for something big, somebody will come in, probably from Vancouver, and buy it, and open up, maybe, a greenhouse or maybe a fruit stand or something of that nature.”
If it wasn’t in the Agricultural Land Reserve, it could easily sell for $4 or $5 million, he said.
It’s among a small group of two-acre lots in that neighbourhood with five-acre properties nearby. Owners often expect that, after a few years, they will be able to take their land out of the reserve, boosting its selling price.
Farmland in Kelowna has doubled in value in the past four to five years, Sandhu said.
The Fitzpatrick Road property has been on the market for less than a week and already fetched one offer of $1.2 million.
“They did not take it,” Sanhu said.
See the listing for 228 Fitzpatrick Road here.
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