After months of a ‘bidding wars’ real estate market in Kamloops, the local real estate association says market activity in May showed the first signs that it is on a path of normalizing, despite buyer demand remaining high.

According to the Kamloops and District Real Estate Association, there were 259 homes sold last month, with a total sales value over $166 million dollars.

Speaking on the NL Morning News, realtor Quinn Pache says single-family house sales went down 36 per cent in May; at the same time as inventory increased 137 per cent.

“Those are crazy numbers because not only are we having a surge of houses come on the market, but we are having fewer people buying them with sales going down,” he explained. “So, what this is creating is we are not seeing the bidding wars that we are so used to, and we are also not seeing houses sell in the matter of a couple of days or a couple of hours.”

Although the average price of a single-family home in May sat around $820,000 in Kamloops in May; the significant uptick of homes going on the market was a result of what Pache describes as a “panic feeling” for homeowners looking to sell.

“What’s creating this is the talk of the news and what we are seeing with interest rates. Interest rates have started going up, and the Bank of Canada being aggressive with those jumps.”

He says these spiking interest rates is putting many people in a position to put their home up for sale in fear of missing out on the seller’s market.

“So then, what we have seen in the last month, is all these houses flood the market, we are seeing 25 new listings a day on average when we are used to seeing maybe 5 or 6 new listings a day.”

Pache explains that now, with the influx in the inventory of homes in Kamloops, buyers now have more options.

Asked if it would be considered a buyers market now with the recent changes last month, Pache explained that it isn’t quite yet, but he feels that in the next couple of months the shift will come.

“Now is the time to get back in and start looking because you have all these options, you have way more inventory to choose from, and you are not going to be competing with people to get the house.”

Pache suggests over the next month or two, the inventory of homes will continue to rise with prices leveling out.

“We’re not going to see the market crash price-wise, but when you look at it, when people are listing their house, now, they might not be getting $100,000 or $150,000 over, so that levels out the prices as well.”

-With files from Jeff Andreas

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