Real estate market review

With the first quarter over and done with it’s time to peek out under our blankets and see what’s going on in our real estate market.  First off, let’s look at what’s for sale.  People usually have a pretty good idea when the market is healthy or not, just by driving around town and seeing the ratio of SOLD signs compared to For Sale signs.  “How come there are so many condos for sale in this building?” is really one of the toughest questions to answer but these days things are humming along nicely.  There are 1,493 residential homes for sale in all with price ranges catering to all budgets.  Here’s a breakdown….

Forty-six of these homes are in foreclosure, 54 are on leasehold land, 349 have suites and 99 are on lakefront.  All in all, a pretty good reasonable number of homes in every price bracket.   I think we would all like to see more homes priced under $400,000 for people who are starting out but lifetime low mortgage rates are absorbing some of the sticker shock when people see what a $300,000 home gets you in Kelowna. 

To sum up the Kelowna real estate market in a sentence: unit sales up a lot…..prices slightly down.  With the first quarter done, there were 560 residential sales over the first three months at an average sale price of $520,000 compared to the first quarter of 2014 when there were 427 homes sold at $544,000.  Keep in mind that the early months are generally locals buying from locals so I wouldn’t read too much into either number at this point. 

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.