Not a typo or a hyped headline, local stats would indicate that across many categories we are seeing signs of pricing stability and indeed in the single family market place a semblance of balance with inventory levels.

If ever you want to follow the statistics, just take a look at (www.omreb.com) and follow the links to market statistics.

A closer look at the July stats reveals that we are running at about 1/2 of the volume of sales that we were doing this time last year. That is a dilemma for us as a community but also many other communities across Canada. Just like the stock markets, an investor is looking at volumes of trades as well as the value of the trade, ensuring that they can be assured of some form of exit strategy from their investment.

I am sure that many of you selling properties are questioning your REALTOR® about how they can show your property more or find more potential buyers, the challenge as you can see from the stats has less to do with the marketing strategy which your REALTOR® can employ and more to do with a distinct lack of buyers in the market place.

So what is creating this dilemma which is leading to a lack of Buyers? It is a very simple answer in my opinion... a lack of consumer confidence. Not in the real estate market place, but still in our economy. If you look at most families visiting the region, they have a pre-determined access to credit. That creates the ability for them to consume, whether that be vacations, vehicles or properties. Most families that I talk to now, whether in Canada or another part of the world are preserving that available credit. The reason is simply that they do not yet believe that we are through the financial turbulence we have been plagued with for some time. So while we see people looking at properties and many REALTORS® have been busy showing properties, the physical contracts are not happening at a pace that we have been familiar with.

Will it return to normal? I believe so, as we have mentioned before, we have not seen unchecked inflation in the Okanagan and the airport, which recently announced increased passenger traffic, is the key to our future success. For those reasons and the fact that the Okanagan is absolutely one of the most beautiful places in the world, we will see a return to what we have experienced in the past, and likely I believe in the next 12-18 months.