Something isn't adding up in the Kelowna housing market right now. Sales are well below normal, there's still plenty of inventory to choose from, and buyers continue to have the advantage. But when we get to prices, that's where things start to get interesting.
Here's a deeper look at the August 2026 numbers for the Central Okanagan — Kelowna, West Kelowna, Peachland and Lake Country — and what I think they're actually telling us.
August closed with 327 sales across the Central Okanagan. The 10-year August average is 435, so we finished about 25% below it. That average is slightly skewed by 2020 and 2021, but this is still a low month by any measure.
I suspect wildfire season played a role. We didn't have a fire directly on our doorstep the way West Kelowna did with the McDougall Creek fire in 2023 — but we had fires and smoke roughly an hour north and an hour south of us, in Vernon and Penticton. For context, August 2023 posted 359 sales during an active local fire, and we came in below that this year.
Compared to last August we're down about 10%. Year-to-date we're down 1.4%, which isn't dramatic, but 2025 wasn't a strong benchmark to begin with.
Active listings finished August at roughly 3,000 — still about 15% above the 10-year average, but genuinely lower than last year. Every single month this year has come in below 2025, which isn't surprising given the glut of inventory we were working through.
Year-over-year, listings are down 12.5%. Year-to-date they're down 10%, and month-over-month they're down about 5%. I expect that line to keep sliding through December as it typically does.
So the market is tightening — but with sales this low, it's tightening from both ends rather than because demand came back.
The Central Okanagan sits at 8.9 months of inventory. That means if nothing new were listed, it would take roughly nine months to sell everything currently available. Last year at this time we were at 9.3, so we've come off slightly — but not much.
For reference, I generally treat 0 to 4 months as a seller's market and 4 to 6 months as balanced. We've been in a buyer's market all year, and 2024, 2025 and 2026 have all leaned this direction.
That's the 30,000-foot view. Individual neighbourhoods, buildings and price points still tell very different stories, and there are pockets where a well-priced home still draws competition.
Single-family sales have declined every year since 2022, and 2026 is the weakest of the run. August came in about 30% below the 10-year average of 203 sales, and dropped 30.7% from July — another number that points toward the fires having an effect. Year-over-year we're down roughly 10%, and year-to-date sales remain below last year.
The busiest part of the market is the $700,000 to $1 million range, which accounted for about 43% of single-family sales in August. The single busiest bracket was $800,000 to $899,000 with 25 sales. If you have a home in that range that's updated and presents well, it still moves relatively quickly.
New listings follow the same pattern. The $800,000–$899,000 bracket had the most competition with 47 listings, followed by $900,000–$999,000 with 38, and then the $700,000s. Those three brackets make up about 40% of everything available. Single-family listings peaked back in 2024 and are now sitting near — actually slightly below — the 10-year average. They're down about 20% year-over-year, 15% year-to-date, and 4.2% month-over-month.
This is a stat I've started tracking, and it tells its own story. An expired listing is one that sat on the market for at least 60 days — often much longer — and came off without selling. In August, 69 single-family listings expired. That's down almost 25% from last year, which is a good sign, but year-to-date we're at 503 single-family homes where buyers effectively said no to the price.
If you're selling right now, that's the number to sit with. Pricing is everything in this market. The days of twenty offers are gone unless you're deliberately underpriced — and underpriced is underpriced. You need to be paying attention week over week to what you're competing against and, more importantly, what has actually sold.
Single-family months of inventory sits just under nine, down slightly from nine last year. The absorption rate is 11.6%, meaning roughly 11 or 12 out of every 100 homes on the market in August actually sold.
The list-to-sale ratio came in at 97.4%, so buyers and sellers are negotiating about 2.6% off the last list price. There's real back-and-forth happening.
Days on market is where it gets interesting. Based on the last listing, it's taking about 60 days on average to sell a single-family home. But when I went through every August sale and calculated cumulative days on market — adding up the time across re-listings and price repositions — it's closer to three months. So realistically you're looking at somewhere between two and three months.
Here's how that works: say a home was listed at $1.8 million for 33 days, came off the market, then relisted at $1.749 million and sold in 7 days. Based on the last listing that's 7 days. Cumulatively it's 40. That gap matters if you're deciding whether to price aspirationally or price to sell.
Prices came down slightly month-over-month, but the benchmark price for a single-family home in the Central Okanagan is still just over $1 million. Year-over-year it's up 0.2% — a few thousand dollars. Essentially flat.
The longer view is more useful. Compared to the March 2022 peak of nearly $1.2 million, prices are down about 11%, or roughly $131,000 on the same house. So if you're buying, this is a materially better market than 2021 or 2022. If you bought near the peak and need to sell now, you're likely taking a hit.
Sales are low, inventory is still relatively high but declining, and the market is slowly balancing out — while remaining firmly in buyer's territory.
If you're selling, pricing and presentation are everything, and pricing is number one. If you're buying, there's still a lot to choose from. You can be picky and you can be patient. Just remember that if the perfect home comes up for you, there's a good chance it's perfect for someone else too.
If you're buying or selling and want to make sense of what these numbers mean for your specific situation, I'd be happy to sit down and walk through it with you.
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