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Real estate market picking up in Kamloops and the Okanagan

FILE PHOTO.
FILE PHOTO.
Image Credit: pexels.com

On a year-to-year basis, April housing prices have dropped by 9.4% in the Interior of BC compared to April 2022.

That’s the bad news, if you’re selling.

But, to put that figure into perspective, last spring saw record-setting price spikes across the country so that year-to-year drop is more of an anomaly.

Prices started falling about this time last year as the Bank of Canada hit buyers with regular increases to its prime lending rate.

On a short-term basis, prices in the Interior were up 3% in April from March, reaching a benchmark, or typical, price of $660,500 for all housing types.

That’s a 1% increase from six months ago, according to data released today, May 15, by the Canadian Real Estate Association.

The data breaks BC down into seven real estate regions, lumping all the Interior into one region.

While it shows prices in the Interior were down by 2.2% from six months ago and 9.4% from a year ago, they are up 44.9% from three years ago and 44.5% from five years ago, the biggest gains in B.C. except for Vancouver Island.

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“Over the last few months, there have been signs that housing markets were going to heat back up this year, so it wasn’t a surprise to see things take off after the Easter weekend, which often serves as the opener to the spring market,” association chair Larry Cerqua, said in a news release. “The issue going forward is not new: demand is once again returning at a scale that is outpacing supply.”

Nationally, the number of new listings increased by 1.6% in April compared to March but is still at a 20-year low.

“With interest rates at a top, and home prices at a bottom, it wasn’t all that surprising to see buyers jumping off the sidelines and back into the market in April,” Shaun Cathcart, the association’s senior economist, said in the news release. “Supply, on the other hand, has been sluggish, hence the price gains from March to April seen all over the country.

“Looking ahead, the first week of May did see a bit of a burst of new supply, suggesting some of those April buyers were existing owners now looking to sell their current homes. That could make for the kind of virtuous circle that might ultimately get more first- time buyers into the ownership space this year.”


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