Okanagan residential real estate sales dip by 30% year over year

There were far fewer housing sales in B.C.’s Okanagan region this April than at the same time last year, according to the local realtors association.

The Association of Interior Realtors is reporting that there were 1,226 residential unit sales across the region in April, and that’s 30.6 fewer than in April 2022. On the flip side, it’s up from a month earlier, in March, when there were 1,207 unit sales.

Pricing has also dipped year over year.

In the Central Okanagan, the benchmark price of a single-family home was $1,051,100 April. That’s down 8.8 per cent from the same period last year.

1:51 Open House: Easy improvements to up a home’s selling price

Sales have also slowed in the greater Kelowna area, with single-family homes sitting on the market for an average of 53 days, which is 150 per cent longer than the same time last year. Inventory, however, has risen 33 per cent.

Over in the North Okanagan conditions are similar, though slightly less extreme. The median price of a single-family home in April was $764,400, which is down 4.1 per cent year over year.

The number of days that a house sits on the North Okanagan market is 48, and the realtors association said that’s 98.6 per cent longer than last year.

In the South Okanagan, the benchmark price for a single-family home was $730,900 which is a drop of 7.8 per cent from a year earlier. The number of days a house tended to stay on the market was 52, which is a rise of 71 per cent.

For all three markets, the amount of single-family home inventory available to buy is up somewhere between 33 and 53 per cent.

Conversely, condos are seeing marginally higher prices in the North and South Okanagan. In the Central Okanagan, prices are down 4.5 per cent.

0:33 Drop in home sales expected this year

Realty association president Chelsea Mann indicated that the market showed cause for optimism, despite these trends.

People paused their real estate ventures amid rising interest rates last year, she said, but have started to resume their searches with different expectations in mind.

That said, old challenges linger.

“The chronic lack of supply has been a common theme for the last few years with new listings simply not hitting the market as actively to meet the demand of growing communities,” Mann said.

“The limited housing stock makes it really challenging for motivated buyers to find what they are looking for within their price range.”

2:01 63% of Canadian non-homeowners ‘giving up’ on buying a home: Ipsos poll