Why now is likely the best time to buy a house in Kamloops, Okanagan
It’s been an unusually slow winter in the Kamloops and Okanagan real estate markets but that’s changing and there is every chance the market, and prices, are going to pick up significantly.
After a couple of years of turbulent downs and ups during the COVID years, the markets are now returning to normal.
“What we would see in a typical market is things do quiet down through the winter months, especially in an area like the Thompson-Okanagan where we’re dealing with snow and cold weather and all of those things that tend to keep us bundled up and indoors,” Lyndi Cruickshank, president of the Association of Interior Realtors, told iNFOnews.ca.
“Then, when spring starts to show its wonderful signs, people start getting busy listing their homes and getting out and viewing properties. We’re just now getting back into an environment where we’re seeing open houses again.”
Interest rates are high and will likely remain so for some time to come. The Bank of Canada rate remained unchanged yesterday, April 12, at 4.5%.
READ MORE: Bank of Canada holds key interest rate at 4.5%, says no plans to cut soon
“Yes they are higher than they were in 2019, but they’re not dramatically off what they were,” Cruickshank said. “We do want to see the interest rates be as affordable as possible but we are in what many people are calling a normalized market.”
Higher interest rates last year cut dramatically into the demand for homes which, in turn, led to lower prices and the virtual end to bidding wars in the Thompson-Okanagan.
“While we have seen some (downward) movement in home prices, it’s not to the degree that many people had expected because the demand still exceeds the supply,” Cruickshank said. “There’s every likelihood that will remain the case over the future months and even into future years because we know there are not enough homes to fill the demand within our province and right across the country.”
That means there are many buyers thinking this may be their best time to make a move.
An RBC national survey, released this week, found that 32% of B.C. residents feel they have a narrow window to take advantage of the lower prices. And 52% feel there will be no peak to prices once they start climbing.
“The market goes up and goes down,” Cruickshank said. “It usually doesn’t go down to the lowest point it was previously. Then it rises over what that last peak was.”
That means, at some point, housing prices will break last year’s records but she can’t predict when that might be.
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“One of the things we’re seeing right now is that people have that really important time available, again, to be able to do the due diligence that is so important for any purchaser,” Cruickshank said. “That was one of the real struggles that we saw last year because there were so many offers on any given property.”
But already things are starting to change.
“People who are listing homes now that are in alignment with the current market values, they are selling their homes, still, quite quickly,” Cruickshank said. “In many cases we are seeing multiple offers, depending on the price segment of the market that they are sitting in, so the demand, certainly, is still there.”
Adding to that demand may the first-time homebuyers who are showing increased confidence in their ability to get into the market.
The RBC survey found that 78% of first-time Canadian buyers feel they are in a better position to buy than in previous years and 68% say the lower prices will allow them to get into the market.
Which means that competition may be increasing, just when things were seeming to get back to normal.
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