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Kelowna  

Rents staying high in Central Okanagan despite economic slowdown

Rental slump never came

Like the residential real estate market, the pandemic crash "just never came" for the Central Okanagan rental sector. 

While unemployment in the Kelowna area is sitting at eight per cent, roughly double what it was one year ago, the median price for a one-bedroom apartment in Kelowna is an eye-watering $1,500 a month — the fifth highest in the country.

“We haven’t been impacted in the ways that we thought we would be,” said Lindsay Anderson, property manager for Vantage West Realty.

While there was a two-week lull in activity in March and April, Anderson says renters in Kelowna appear to have carried on with their moving plans. 

“We’ve found that the demand has still been there, the pricing has been the same as years prior and maybe even a little higher."

Anderson noted they have made changes to the way to show and lease apartments — signing documents electronically, paying rent with e-transfers and Skype walkthroughs. 

Any slowdown of the rental market has been contained to areas that have been traditionally popular with students, who are now taking classes remotely. 

“Those areas that are normally really popular with students, like Academy Way… those buildings are normally packed, we have no problem finding tenants. This year, we are getting really competitive with pricing and hardly getting any inquiries,” Anderson said.

The biggest change has seen many owners of units that are traditionally rented out as vacation rentals in the summer months put those units into the long-term rental pool. As a result, the “hundreds” of units that traditionally hit the rental market in September have already been leased out.

“The market boomed into late September,” Anderson said, before slowly declining as it does every year towards the end of December.

According to PadMapper, the median cost for a two-bedroom rental in Kelowna was $1,750 in September, the sixth most expensive price among Canada 24 largest centres.

Looking to move? Find your next rental home on the Castanet Classifieds, the Okanagan's largest classified site and source of rental listings.



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