The Board stats released this month are showing encouraging signs that REALTORS® were generally talking about in the past few months - a lift in interest and corresponding volume of contracts being written.

 

While prices continue to hold steady and upon reflection have not retracted back more than a few years, activity level has declined considerably.

 

What we can take away from this is the stability in the Okanagan real estate market. The volume of sales has slipped back to levels seen in the early 2000's while the pricing has retracted to pricing levels seen a few years ago. This is good news and supports the theory that the market is approaching a more balanced scenario. While we have a ways to go before we leave a Buyers market behind, we can take encouragement from the fact that more people are making a purchasing decision than the same time last year.

 

This has not been an easy year for anyone to predict what will be happening next month and that leads to confusion and uncertainty in the market place. Just pull up the TSX index for the past 6 months and look at the roller coaster ride that we have been through. At the same time, pull up a graph of average or median housing values in the Okanagan and it will be a much more predictable situation.

 

There are some tremendous bargains in the market place at the moment and one of the opportunities that has moved into the limelight has to be cash flow investments. How many times have you heard people talking about ski hill investments and the ability to make money from rentals. In theory it works really well until the real estate values head north of $400 per square foot and then the rentals don't generate the cash required to carry the property in many instances. In general we are seeing that well selected investments in houses, condo's and resort properties can now yield a good cash flow return which have the ability to replace the stock market annuity you may have invested in but with the upside that the asset value is stable and likely to increase over the next several years.