Kamloops condo project came to market at just the right time
Selling out a condo project in Kamloops before it’s built is not all that unusual.
But selling out in one day is.
“There have been other developments that have sold out previously but, in the last few years, there hasn’t been anything in Kamloops that pretty well sold out on day one,” Brendan Shaw, owner of Brendan Shaw Real Estate told iNFOnews.ca. “It certainly set a precedent for the area."
His firm handled the marketing of the Rockcliffe at TRU 40-unit condo project for the Kelson Group. It went on sale Saturday and, technically, sold 95 per cent of the units that day, although they were all spoken for.
“It’s just these last couple of units,” Shaw said. “We’re still working through the contract process with them so that’s why we went with 95%.”
While Shaw would like to take the credit for doing a great job marketing the project, he pointed out that, not only is the B.C. real estate market very hot right now. Throughout the Thompson-Okanagan, prices are climbing fast with limited inventory. It's pushed average home prices in March for Kamloops up to $686,000 and nearly $1 million in the Central Okanagan.
READ MORE: Average single-family home price nears $1M in Kelowna; Kamloops gaining fast
But the condos were marketed to be affordable.
“They (Kelson) had a great team,” Shaw said. “Their engineers and architects who designed that building, they designed it right, They didn’t go too big on the unit sizes. They tried to keep the value down for purchasers to really create, not only just a sense of community, but an affordability factor for some of their market units.”
Some of the studio suites sold in the $200,000 range.
About 60 per cent of the buyers were local people with most of the others being from the Lower Mainland, Shaw said.
READ MORE: Have a plan if you're hoping to cash in on the hot housing market, says Okanagan realtor
The sales structure was not set up for multiple bidders so units were not sold for more than their asking prices, although a few buyers seemed interested in reselling for higher prices some time in the future, he said.
“The developer just wanted to adopt a strategy to sell out and sell out in a reasonable time frame,” Shaw said. “The time frame we had was before occupancy, which is scheduled for June or July, so selling out in one day – it certainly beat every expectation I had.”
For more information on the Rockcliffe project, go here.
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