Sales are down, new listings are down, yet prices are up. Welcome to the confusing world of the Okanagan housing market.
On Wednesday, the Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board issued its monthly press release regarding housing sales from Revelstoke to Peachland. Overall, OMREB said housing sales in June continued a downward trend.
Yet in the Central Okanagan, when comparing last year’s average house price to this year’s average house price, there’s been an increase.
OMREB listed June’s average price at $547,485, which it said was up slightly over May and seven per cent higher than last year. In the Central Okanagan in June 2017, the average price was listed at $525,125. In June 2016, the average price was $486,244.
For June 2018, OMREB said region-wide there were 799 sales, a slight drop from May, but 22 per cent lower when compared to June 2017. Last June, there were 1,168 units sold according to OMREB stats.
“This is the fourth consecutive month where sales volumes are substantially down from the same period last year,” said OMREB President Marv Beer.
According to OMREB, “a shift towards a more balanced market is a natural and welcome progression, although the current trend may be somewhat amplified by government intervention in the form of new mortgage rules, interest rate hikes and the specter of a speculation tax that could impact Kelowna and West Kelowna.”
“In a weird kind of irony, government measures to increase housing affordability are actually having the opposite effect, not just curbing housing demand, but affecting household purchasing power as well,” Beer said. “People aren’t able to qualify for the same amount of mortgage as before, and this, coupled with higher interest rates, means they can afford less, which is likely to be particularly impactful on first-time buyers and those at the lower end of the price-range.”
Notably, OMREB said while sales were 22 per cent lower than June 2017, there was a 22 per cent increase in inventory of homes for sale over this time last year.