The Kelowna townhome market kept sliding as we headed into fall. Sales quite literally crashed in August, townhomes are taking longer to sell, and even though inventory came down slightly, buyers still have an enormous amount of choice. That combination makes life very difficult if you're trying to sell right now.
Below I break down what happened with sales and inventory first, then get into prices — plus a bonus look at half duplexes that a viewer asked me for.
There were 42 townhome sales across the Central Okanagan in August 2026. Looking back at every August for the past ten years, that is the lowest of them all. The 10-year August average sits at 64 sales, so we came in roughly 35% below normal.
I do think the wildfires played a role this year. That said, we didn't have a fire in our own backyard the way we did in 2023 — this year the fires were further south around Summerland and Penticton, and further north near Vernon. We got the smoke, but not the direct emergency. And here's the part that stands out to me: during the August 2023 fire season, when the fire started right here on August 17th, we still recorded 59 sales. This August, with no fire in Kelowna itself, we managed 42. That's a worse result than an actual fire season.
Month over month the drop was dramatic: 70 sales in July down to 42 in August, a 40% decline. That is not typical for summer. Last year the same stretch went from 61 to 47 — a decline, but nowhere near as sharp. Year over year we're down from 47 to 42, about 11%. And adding up the year so far, we're running 4.1% below 2025, which itself was a slow year.
Listings are the complete flip side of that story. We finished August with 420 active townhome listings. The peak was 442 back in 2024, and inventory has only come off slowly since then — we're essentially level with where we were last year.
The 10-year average is 336 listings, and that average is skewed downward by the 2021 seller's market, when we bottomed out at just 145. Even if you smooth that out, we're still comfortably above normal — call it 20% or more.
Month over month we barely moved, 426 down to 420 (about 1.4%). Year to date we're down 4.2%, and year over year it's 423 to 420 — less than 1%. Almost every month this year has run slightly below last year except for June, when we got the usual spring spike before the drop-off into July. I expect inventory to follow a similar curve through the rest of the year as things quiet down into winter.
Months of inventory is the metric that tells us what kind of market we're actually in. Take the active listings and divide by the month's sales: 420 ÷ 42 gives us 10 months of inventory. In theory, if nothing new were listed, it would take ten months to clear what's on the market. That is firmly a buyer's market.
Flip the calculation and you get the absorption rate: 42 ÷ 420 = 10%. Only one in ten listings on the market in August actually sold. That's a very tough month by any measure.
Of the properties that did sell, the list-to-sale ratio came in at 97.8% — buyers and sellers negotiated an average of 2.2% off the last list price. Meanwhile 25 listings expired in August. An expired listing is one that sat at least 60 days (the standard length of our listing contracts) without selling. I'd say with near certainty that virtually all of those were overpriced — aspirationally priced sellers who weren't willing or motivated enough to meet the market.
The townhomes that sold in August took an average of 64 days — just over two months. But that number only counts the most recent listing. If you look at cumulative days on market, which adds up every relisting of the same property, the real figure stretches to around 106 days.
Here's how that gap happens. Say a townhome is listed at $800,000 and sits for 33 days. The seller drops to $750,000 and relists. It sells 7 days later. The advertised days to sell gets recorded as 7 — but the property was actually on the market for 40 days. That's the number that matters when you're planning your own sale.
So realistically, expect somewhere between 64 and 106 days depending on how you price it, how it shows, and what conditions are attached to the deal. Price it aspirationally and it takes longer. Price it to what the market is telling you and you'll likely beat 64 days.
At the end of August the benchmark townhome price sat at $698,000. For that money in Kelowna you're generally looking at a brand new or near-new three or four bedroom townhome.
That's down 3.3% year over year — we were closer to $722,000 at this time last year. More significantly, prices are now back to roughly where they were in May 2021. If you bought above that line, selling today likely means taking a hit, whether on price alone or on price plus the costs of selling.
From the March 2022 peak of $838,000, the benchmark is down about $140,000, or nearly 17%. Within 2026 itself, prices bottomed near $670,000 in January, ran up into May, and have given back roughly $30,000 since.
My read going forward: I expect us to hover around that $700,000 mark for a while. I'm not calling for a crash, but I'm not expecting any meaningful run-up either.
Someone asked in the comments for a snapshot on half duplexes, so here it is. The dynamics look a lot like townhomes — and depending on your price point, you're competing with buyers shopping townhomes on one side and single family homes on the other.
If you'd like me to go deeper on a specific area — Lower Mission, Rutland, Glenmore, anywhere else — leave a comment on the video and I'll work it into future market updates.
If you're selling, there's a lot of inventory to compete with and we are firmly in a buyer's market. Pricing and presentation are doing the heavy lifting right now.
If you're buying, you can afford to be picky and patient. But one caution: when the genuinely right property comes along — well priced, shows well — it's probably right for someone else too. I've seen those move quickly even in a buyer's market, so don't assume you have unlimited time on every listing.
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