Home Sales Spike

Home sales are heating up across the Okanagan.

The Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board says over 11-hundred homes were sold in May, up 38 percent from April – but down 6 percent from May 2016.

“Spring is typically a busy market and the May indicators certainly reflect that,” says OMREB President Tanis Read. “While we haven’t hit the sales volumes we saw this time last year, we’re not far off the peak of 1263 sales last June.”

There were 326 units sold in the North Okanagan worth $131 million, up from the 222 in April and the 283 in May 2016.

The average home in the North Okanagan was selling for $451,663 last month, up 8 percent from the $417,046 a year ago.

The average number of days on market, or the average time it takes to sell a home, was 62 days in May, as compared to 90 days this time last year.

“We are seeing the effect of an increase in demand without the inventory of homes for sale to support it,” says Read.

While the lack of inventory may be easing, Read points out that the ratio of home sales to active listings,a measure of balance between supply and demand in the housing market, is currently 28% in the region, and that a ratio above 20% typically indicates a sellers’ market.

The largest percentage of buyers in the region continues to be those who live in the region at 56%, with Lower Mainland/Vancouver Island buyers at 20%, and Albertans at 8.5%.

“The large majority of home buyers are people who already live here, with two-parent families with children and first-time buyers always a healthy percentage,” says Read.