Rent slowly getting cheaper in Kelowna as condo stock increases
Rent prices are slowly but steadily trending downwards in Kelowna, and the huge volume of condos might help speed up that descent into affordability.
Kelowna’s average asking price to rent a one-bedroom apartment is $1,953, down 1.3 per cent from this time last year, and a two-bedroom is going for $2,317, down 9.4 per cent from this time last year, according to the latest report from Rentals.ca.
The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in B.C. is $2,505, down 3.5 per cent year-over-year, and the national rent is $2,137, down 2.3 per cent from last year.
Rentals.ca includes condos in its rental calculations. The national rental price for a one-bedroom condo is at $2,005, down by 4.3 per cent from last year. Rent around the country has been going down for 11 months straight, but prices are still one per cent higher than they were in August 2023.
Shannon Stone is a realtor in Kelowna who sells condos and she said sellers are having a bit of a tough time.
“I think those days of being able to buy a condo, rent it for cash flow, may be gone... if you're wanting one of the new builds, that's probably going to be tricky when you factor in strata fees,” she said.
With rent prices on the decline and mortgage interest rates around 4 per cent, she said the days of people buying condos as rental properties could be coming to an end.
The market is moving away from investors looking to make a quick profit from the actual rent payments and towards investors that are holding onto a condo for a few years hoping its value goes up, she said.
There are currently 893 condos on the market in the Central Okanagan, according to the latest data from the Association of Interior Realtors. The benchmark condo price in Central Okanagan is around $497,000.
Condos are still selling, the association’s data shows that 101 condos sold in August. A lot of the unfinished condos that are going to be ready to move into this year are pre-sold before construction begins.
Whether developers holding unsold condos are going to go straight to the rental market or will hang on to try to sell them, Stone isn’t sure.
“I think it makes more sense that they will bring them to market to try to sell them. But I guess every developer will be a little bit different,” she said.
Stone said with more condos coming on the market, some of them becoming rentals, and housing prices in general slowly coming down, things are starting to look a bit better for folks who have felt the brunt of the housing crisis.
“We tell a lot of clients to kind of play that real estate game on the real estate ladder... where you buy and you get into a condo that's an affordable condo but (it's not) going to be your forever home... with the white picket fence and that sort of thing," she said.
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