Kelowna sees one of Canada's steepest home price drops in past year

KELOWNA · Kelowna had one of the country's highest housing price declines over the last 12 months, according to a new Royal LePage survey. The median price for a single-family home in the Central Okanagan city dropped 5.9 percent to $1.14 million over the past year. Only six other Canadian cities, including Burnaby and New Westminster, saw higher percentage decreases. The survey measures prices in 65 Canadian cities.

The median condominium price in Kelowna fell a more modest 1.2 percent. The aggregate price drop for all property types in the city was 5.6 percent, which was also the seventh-highest figure among the cities surveyed. Nationally, Canada's median home price decreased 0.8 percent over the year and was down 0.6 percent from the second quarter of this year. "The Canadian housing market has spent the past three months treading water, with home prices largely flat and national sales volumes on track to finish 2026 slightly below even the sluggish pace of 2025," said Royal LePage president and CEO Phil Soper. "Autumn, the second-busiest season of the year, typically injects energy into the market. This year, economic uncertainty and concern that mortgage rates could move materially higher are keeping would-be buyers on the sidelines."

Soper said much of the reason for the real estate uncertainty is ongoing trade tensions with the United States. "Global economic turbulence and escalating trade tensions with our neighbours to the south continue to weigh on buyer psychology," he said. "Canadians' confidence in buying and selling real estate is obviously tightly linked to the perceived stability of the country's relationship with our closest trading partner. For many buyers, the hesitation is less about what they can afford today than how secure they feel about tomorrow."

READ MORE: Home sales and prices fell in September as buyers face higher mortgage rates

READ MORE: Kelowna home sales stall as prices hold steady in September

The Royal LePage survey found that buyers currently have more negotiating power due to a larger selection of homes for sale. "With more homes to choose from and little pressure to act quickly, buyers can afford to wait, and uncertainty gives them a reason to," Soper said. "Yet, buyers have advantages that were hard to imagine during the pandemic-era frenzy. Prices have retreated from their peaks in most markets, and a larger selection of homes for sale gives buyers more time, more choice and greater negotiating power." Statistics from the Association of Interior Realtors earlier this month painted a slightly different picture for Kelowna, though the organization uses benchmark prices instead of median figures. The AIR found Kelowna's single-family benchmark price, which represents a dwelling of typical attributes, was between $1.06 and $1.07 million over the last three months, which was an increase over last year's benchmark price.

Royal LePage does not provide a market forecast for all 65 cities in its price survey, but it projects Vancouver will have the largest price percentage decrease over the next year among Canada's 10 largest centres, at 4.5 percent. Overall, however, national prices are expected to rise slightly. "Price softening in the third quarter offset some of the gains made earlier in the year," Soper said. "We expect a modest pickup in sales activity through the remainder of the fall, although persistent trade uncertainty could delay that improvement. The conditions for recovery are in place. Canada's housing market is on a detour, not a derailment."

With files from Castanet