One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains a sellers market in the Kamloops area.
Kamloops and District Real Estate Association president Wendy Runge says the average home sold for $515,293 last month – a new record – a 20 per cent jump over the same month last year.
The average single family home in the Kamloops area sold for $603,768 last month, while the average price of a multi-family home was just over $412,000. The district includes the City of Kamloops as well as Merritt, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Clinton, Lillooet, Barriere, Clearwater, McLure, Chase, the north and south Shuswap, Monte Lake, Westwold, and Pritchard.
“The market is hot. We’ve been setting records for months now and the trend is just continuing,” Kamloops and District Real Estate Association (KADREA) President Wendy Runge said, on NL Newsday.
“I showed a bare land strata and they ended up having 14 offers. I don’t know what it went for yet, but its going to go well over list price. Its the same even with the higher end stuff. A house that was listed at over $900,000 actually ended up selling for $1.2 million. So we are seeing this kind of crazy bit of a frenzy right now.”
Runge says buyers are enticed by low interest rates and sellers are cashing in.
“If a house is still there in a couple of weeks, you’re lucky. We are seeing a lot of multiple offers as well and you know, over list price is not uncommon thing these days. So yeah, people are taking advantage of these low interest rates and getting out there,” she added.
Runge notes last month was the best February for home sales in a decade with a 37 per cent increase compared to February, 2020.
“I really can’t see an end in sight to this trend without a significant shift in supply or demand,” Runge said.
While there were 349 new listings added last month improving inventory numbers slightly, she says it did make much of a change in the market scenario.
“We are selling listings at the same rate as the number of listings hitting the market. We are up 6.3 per cent in listings from last February, but overall, we are still down 40 per cent in total number of listings from this time last year. The gap in the number of listings to the number of sales has to increase dramatically to see any significant change.”
High demand continues to drive #Kamloops & District #realestate sales records.
Visit the #KADREA Market Stats page: https://t.co/nkpkwy9IVU
Read more on: @RadioNLNews https://t.co/FOgVBkkKr4 pic.twitter.com/h34YCq0YME
— KADREA (@KADREAOffice) March 5, 2021
