Kelowna experiences buyer’s market as number of real estate listings increases – Okanagan

Nowadays you see a lot of ‘for sale’ signs on houses in Kelowna.

“We’ve been accumulating a lot of inventory over the last few months,” Kelowna realtor Jaime Briggs said. “Right now, we’re sitting at about nine months of inventory.”

Briggs said several factors are at play, including lower-than-normal sales last spring and a lackluster tourist season this summer.

“The summer really hurt us,” Briggs said. “We’ve seen a lack of tourism and a lack of people coming to the Okanagan and normally people come here. They fall in love with the area, they want to buy here.”

2:21
A look inside a $10 million penthouse for sale in Kelowna

According to a recent report from Re/Max Canada, the number of listings in the region increased by 17.8 percent compared to the same period last year, while home sales fell by 12 percent.

Although prices have risen slightly, the average sales price for all types of property has fallen by 2.4 percent.

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“There’s not a lot of activity,” said Brendon Ogmundson, chief economist for the BC Real Estate Association. “We would much rather see a balanced market with lots of listings, lots of sales, but instead we’re in this market that’s stuck in this low activity state.”

According to Ogmundson, fewer homes have been sold in Kelowna due to the weak economy.

“The one thing that’s true about Kelowna right now is the economy there has been struggling for the last six to eight months. Tourism has really been hit, partly by short-term regulations, probably other factors, and so we’ve seen some job losses in typical tourism sectors,” Ogmundson said. “Sales there have been pretty weak, but it looks like they bottomed out in early spring and have started to pick up again in the last couple of months.”

According to Re/Max Canada, with the large selection of homes available, Kelowna is now a buyer’s market, giving buyers more options.

“Interestingly, we’re in a buyer’s market, and I say generally,” Briggs said. “In some categories, the market is still tight, so in some of the entry-level products, we’re still seeing multiple offers, but in the luxury market of over a million and up, we have a lot of inventory.”

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Will the Okanagan real estate market be flooded with new listings as a result of new short-term rental rules?

According to Re/Max Canada, new restrictions on short-term rentals that went into effect in May are helping the buyer’s market. Many properties, particularly condos, that were once used as vacation rentals are now up for sale, flooding the market.

“People who owned and rented these products are having to sell them because they don’t want to enter into a long-term lease,” Briggs said.

Re/Max and Briggs don’t think so, or whether the recent quarter-percentage-point rate cut by the Bank of Canada will be enough to entice more buyers to snap up all those properties.

“We had hoped it would be a bigger drop, but I don’t think it’s going to spur people into action and jump off the fence,” Briggs said.

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