It needs to be said that the days of multiple offers on homes for sale have returned as buyers with a real estate agent can’t book house showings soon enough before offers start coming in.
For example, the real estate team that I work for at Re/Max Kelowna recently had an out-of-town buyer make the trip here to the Central Okanagan for her house hunting search.
A very educated buyer, she has been fallowing the Kelowna real estate market for some time now, doing the research to find a home that might best suit her needs.
This client was searching for a single-family home in the up to $600,000 range from Peachland to Lake Country, so there was an abundance of possible matches for her.
That is until she realized just how hot the Kelowna real estate market had suddenly become. She had hand-picked 21 properties to initially check out, only to discover 11 of them had already been sold.
Taking another run at her selection process, she target four more properties, only to find out two of those properties had also been sold.
The sales stats for April reflect the continued predicted for increased sales numbers, up already 22 per cent over the same month last year. That’s 216 properties sold this April compared to 216 for April 2013.
What’s going on in the Central Okanagan market now is buyers are feeling the heat of competing bids coupled with a below average inventory level and continuing low interest rates.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Kelly Kubik, with the Investors Group, who was expressing the urgency for buyers to take advantage of the record low interest rates now being offered.
“As a consultant working with Investors Group, I am very pleased to hear about the variable rate mortgage rates that Investors Group Financial announced last week of 1.99 per cent,” he noted.
“I personally feel this is a great opportunity for first-time buyers and buyers in general to get into the market with these record low interest rates.”
