Average single-family home price nears $1M in Kelowna; Kamloops gaining fast
High demand for single-family homes throughout Canada has pushed up the average price in the Central Okanagan to $1 million.
“Just when we thought it couldn't get much crazier, the market tells us otherwise,” Kelowna RE/MAX realtor Colin Krieg wrote in an email. “Over 25 per cent of the listings selling is considered a sellers' market. What do you call a market with 100 per cent of the listings selling?”
In March 413 single-family homes were sold in the Central Okanagan while only 414 new listings were added to the local inventory.
The average price for single-family homes, not including waterfront, hit $967,452, up almost 35 per cent from the year before.
In March, the average price in Kamloops went up by 39.5 per cent to $686,216 compared to March 2020. The Kamloops and District Real Estate Association reported 201 sales last month but only picked up 183 new listings.
This is a trend that is happening across the country.
“Exceptionally low interest rates, changing housing needs and high household savings clearly continue to stoke demand for homes offering more living space,” states the latest RBC’s latest posting on real estate markets. “However, prices in some markets are increasingly difficult to justify based on fundamentals — and are poised to spiral further upward in the near term.”
In Vancouver, the typical single-family home is worth $1.7 million, the report states.
While some realtors list benchmark or typical house prices, others just list averages. That makes direct comparisons difficult.
RBC cited the benchmark for Vancouver. The Association of Interior Realtors prefers benchmark pricing, which was $829,400 versus the average price of $967,452. The average prices are buried deeper in the association's data offerings.
“The benchmark price is a better representation of value compared to the average or median price, as it represents a dwelling with ‘typical attributes’ to those traded in the area,” an explanatory note states in the association’s news releases. “Averages can be misleading due to atypical transactions.”
In the North Okanagan, the average single-family sale price was up 28.4 per cent from last year at $654,064. There were 160 single-family homes sold in that region while there were 191 new listings.
The listings versus sales ratio was even better in the South Okanagan with 105 new listings versus 60 sales yet the average price jumped almost 42 per cent to $803,944.
The increasingly unaffordable single-family home market is now putting price pressures on condos as alternatives, the RBC report states, although that trend is not yet evident in the Thompson-Okanagan.
In the North and Central Okanagan, condo prices increased by about six per cent while they jumped about 16 per cent in Kamloops and the South Okanagan.
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