Supply - Demand

If no one listed their residential property today, at the current rate of Kelowna and West Kelowna residential* property sales it would take over 16 and 27 months respectively to sell off all  the actively listed residential properties shown on Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board (OMREB).

Here is how we compute months of inventory:

• Take the total number of active listings on the market, ie, December 31, 2011,
• and the total  number of sales for the month, ie, December 2011, and then
• divide the number of total listings by the number of total sales, which results in the number of months of inventory remaining.

Now granted, December is typically a month of high inventory and less selling activity in contrast to other months of the year as folks are more focused on the holiday season than buying and selling real estate.  However reviewing the past twelve months in 2011:

• March was Kelowna's lowest at 10.33 months of inventory and
• for West Kelowna June was the lowest inventory level with 12.55 months of  inventory.

In the past ten years the lowest and highest month for inventory levels were:

• 1.75 months of inventory in March 2004 and 2.0 in August 2005 for Kelowna and West Kelowna respectively
• 25.42 months of inventory in November 2008 and 48.00 in November 2008 for Kelowna and West Kelowna respectively

*Residential includes: lots & acreages, manufactured homes, single family residential, townhomes and apartments

What does this all mean?  Well simply, there are more Kelowna area residential properties available for sale than buyers to purchase them.  It's perfect buying conditions!  Buyers have more property selection to choose from and often, prices are adjusted (down) to meet the demands of the buyers.

Real estate is dynamic.  Today Kelowna area inventory levels are high but the trend is, if we look a the past couple of years and follow it into 2012, is that levels lower each month but still 'may' continue to be at the advantage of Buyers.