The average selling price of a single family home in the central Okanagan last month was almost 13% higher than in December 2019.
Newly published real estate figures show that the local real estate market rose sharply in the second half of 2020 after pandemic-related unrest at the beginning of the year.
The reference price for a home in the Kelowna area was $ 746.00 last month, up 12% year over year. And a typical listing that sold in 59 days, 30% faster than a year earlier.
“Last year was a very unusual year. After an initial slowdown due to provincial government stay-at-home orders, we saw high demand in the property market after the orders were canceled, which has usually not faded even in slower months,” Kim Heizmann, president of the Association of Interior Realtors, said in a press release Thursday.
“Despite unusually high demand, the inventory of active offers remained consistently low as buyers picked up houses almost immediately after they were listed,” said Heizmann.
The reference price for a townhouse in the Kelowna area was $ 504,000 last month, up 8.4% from December 2019. For condos, the reference price last month was $ 399,000, up 5 percent year over year.
In December, 193 single-family homes were sold in the Kelowna area, up 64% from December 2019.
A sharp rise in home values since mid-2020 underscores the fact that the valuations reported in the BC assessment notices now received by homeowners are unlikely to indicate what value the property would be if it were listed now.
Between July 1, 2019 and July 1, 2020, the average single-family home in Kelowna rose only 3 percent in value, according to the BC Assessment.
