The Kamloops housing market remains on a COVID tear with record high prices and sales volumes.
"Buyers are willing to pay over the asking price," said Chelsea Mann, a realtor with Century 21 Desert Hills Realty, who is also the president of the Kamloops and District Real Estate Association.
"In the last couple of months, our sales-to-list-price comparison has been above 100%. What that means is, on average, the buyers of Kamloops real estate are paying more than the asking price."
Such a scenario drove the average selling price of a single-family home in the city up to a record $656,238 in April, an incredible 27% hike over the same month last year.
The average selling price of a multi-family home (condominium, townhouse or half-duplex) in Kamloops also set a record at $401,265 in April, up an astounding 38% from April 2020.
A total of 382 homes of all kinds sold in April a 244% spike over April 2020.
That kind of jump is understandable since April 2020 was the start of the pandemic and real estate sales declined sharply.
However, since then sales and prices have accelerated in a trend that defies the general business slowdown prompted by COVID.
The pandemic forced many people to take stock of their lives and some of those people decided they needed a bigger and better house and others still decided to move from big cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto to smaller cities and lifestyle destinations like Kamloops.
Such demand heated the real estate market and caused prices to skyrocket.
Mann estimates 63% of current buyers are local, meaning almost 40% are new to Kamloops.
Such a hot market means the inventory of homes for sale is depleted, making what is on the market even more in demand.
"The shortage of inventory is undeniably the biggest concern we have at the moment," said Mann.
