The Kamloops real estate market remains red hot, with realtors reporting that skyrocketing home costs continued in April.
The average home price in the city reached a record $580,047 last month, which is a 31 per cent increase from the average home price in April of 2020 of just over $442,000.
For Kamloops and surrounding communities in the Thompson and Nicola region, the average home price last month was $546,106, which is a 34 per cent rise from April of 2020 ($407,336).
In the first four months of this year, there have been 1,305 home sales in the Kamloops area, which is substantially more than any of the previous nine years.
“There has also been a notable spike in the number of people coming from other regions and buying in Kamloops, which is helping keep the demand very competitive,” says Chelsea Mann, the president of the Kamloops and District Real Estate Association. Mann says 37 per cent of homebuyers so far this year in Kamloops live outside of this region.
“This is a benefit for sellers looking to list their homes in this busy spring market.”
Mann also acknowledged that prices have “skyrocketed” this year in Kamloops, although she also points in March and April of last year, sales activity plummeted, and she says average prices stayed stagnant for several months.
“We’ve since noticed that demand-led rise in average prices is in direct correlation with the rise in the number of buyers who are willing to pay way over the asking price,” she says, adding “inventory in the region will soon be exhausted” if these trends continue.
“The shortage of inventory is undeniably the biggest concern we have at the moment. Although the market appears to be slowing down a little, we are on track to sell more than we ever have in a calendar year, beating our performance in 2007. Which means that we must keep adding new listings at a faster rate than we sell.”
Last month, the average single-family home price in Kamloops sold for $656,238, and the average multi-family home sold for $401,265. Compared to April of 2020, those values are 26.7 per cent and 37.9 per cent higher, respectively.
