Market cools down in December
Photo: Canadian Press
The combination of the holiday season and high mortgage interest rates caused the Home Office real estate market to weaken significantly in December.
Base prices have fallen almost across the board in the Kamloops area as well as the Central, North and South Okanagan, according to the Interior Realtors Association’s monthly statistical report. The outlier was townhouse prices in the North Okanagan, which rose a whopping 10.1 per cent to $600,100 last month.
“While market activity typically slows during the holiday season, sales activity in December was slower than usual,” AIR President Chelsea Mann said in a press release. “Buyers and sellers who have been on the sidelines with the possibility of interest rate relief are likely to remain optimistic and hold off on committing to property to see if mortgage rates finally become more favorable in the new year. .
“Overall, 2023 was a bit of a slow year for real estate sales, with three rate hikes, devastating wildfires, a lack of affordable housing, and other external factors all likely contributing to a slowdown in overall transactions.” It’s been a great year.”
Despite the slowdown over the past 12 months, the reference price is not far from the December 2022 price. That said, the Central Okanagan single-family benchmark price fell to $966,500 last month, his lowest price since October 2021.
The single-family home threshold in the North Okanagan fell 3 per cent last month to $712,700, while in the South Okanagan it fell nearly 7 per cent to $714,300. In the Kamloops region, the benchmark price for a single-family home fell 1.7 per cent to $650,000 in December.
Just 178 cars were sold in the Central Okanagan last month, down from 184 a year ago. There were 60 sales in the North Okanagan, 58 in the South Okanagan and 87 in the Kamloops region.
