Average single-family home price in Kamloops last month was nearly $690K

Photo: Contributed

The Kamloops real estate market’s rocket-ship ride continues, with sales numbers for March showing major gains and record prices.

Three-hundred and seventy-two properties changed hands in the Kamloops area last month, selling for an average of $545,915 — up more than $120,000 from the $422,673 average in March 2020.

The average price for a single-family home in the Kamloops area was $686,216 last month, up almost 40 per cent from March 2020.

“It has been a year since we first recorded a drop in sales numbers due to the coronavirus lockdown, and what a year this has been for Kamloops real estate,” Chelsea Mann, the new president of the Kamloops and District Real Estate Association, said in a news release.

“We’re indeed setting sales records in the region and I don’t see any downtrend in the months to come. With that said, we must also not ignore the fact that this sharp rise in sales figures is relative to a sluggish period in the 2020 market.”

Prices aside, the 372 sales in the region last month was more than any March in recent memory — and by a long shot. The second-busiest March in the last decade was in 2017, when 276 properties changed hands.

Year-to-date numbers are also through the roof. KADREA has recorded 912 property sales in the area in 2021 up to the end of March; the previous high for year-to-date sales through March 31 was recorded in 2017, when there were 600 sales in that period.

“The current real estate market situation in Kamloops can be compared to the one we saw in 2016, where a sudden rise in demand led to a sharp rise in average prices,” Mann said.

“This year, there is no end for this demand in sight, as increased work-from-home opportunities [are] getting people more interested in moving to smaller markets like ours. While numbers suggest that buyers of Kamloops real estate are mostly local, we’re starting to see a shift in this trend and all property types are selling quite fast.”