Kamloops Real Estate Market Update: What Buyers Need to Know in Spring 2026

The ground shifts every spring in Kamloops. Some years it's a slow, barely perceptible tilt. Other years, the whole board reorganizes. Spring 2026 is shaping up to be the latter, and if you're thinking about buying a home in this city, the next few months will carry real consequences for what you pay, what you find, and how long you wait.

This isn't a moment to sit on the sidelines and hope for clarity. The clarity is already here. You just need to know where to look.

What Homes Are Actually Selling For

Three numbers anchor the current Kamloops market, and they deserve your full attention.

Single-family homes are benchmarking at $655,700. Townhomes sit at $503,300. Condominiums come in at $375,800. Taken together, these figures paint a picture of a market that has cooled from its fever pitch without collapsing into the floor.

Year-over-year, benchmark prices across all three categories reflect modest softening in some segments and surprising resilience in others. Single-family homes held their ground better than many predicted, buoyed by persistent demand from families relocating from the Lower Mainland and Alberta. Townhomes saw slight pressure as inventory in that category climbed. Condos, long considered the entry-level lifeline for first-time buyers, remain one of the more stable segments, partly because the pool of buyers competing for them stayed relatively consistent through 2025.

None of these are distressed numbers. They are, by any reasonable measure, still elevated compared to where Kamloops sat five years ago. What's shifted is the trajectory. The near-vertical price acceleration of 2021 and 2022 is gone. What's replaced it is a market with actual negotiating room, actual conditions written into offers, and actual choices for buyers who arrive prepared.

What You'll Find When You Start Looking

Inventory has expanded meaningfully heading into spring. Active listings across the Kamloops and area market have risen compared to the same window last year, and that matters in practical terms for anyone scheduling viewings right now.

A balanced market, by conventional measure, carries roughly four to six months of supply. Kamloops is threading close to that range in select segments, which makes the broad characterization straightforward: this is not the seller's market that defined the pandemic era, nor is it a buyer's market in the clinical sense where prices crater and sellers accept anything. It sits in between, leaning slightly toward buyers in some price ranges and property types.

What that means on the ground is this. A well-priced home in a desirable neighbourhood still moves with urgency. Sometimes within days. A home priced at the aspirational top of its range may sit for three or four weeks while the seller recalibrates. Subjects and conditions are back in a meaningful way. Home inspections are being requested and accepted. That alone represents a seismic change from the unconditional offer culture of three years ago.

Buyers who went through the 2021-2022 market and lost bidding war after bidding war are still carrying some of that psychological armor. They're cautious. But the market no longer requires the reckless moves it once extracted from anyone who wanted to buy.

Rates, Affordability, and What the Bank of Canada Has Done

The Bank of Canada spent much of 2024 and early 2025 cutting its policy rate from the restrictive peaks that defined the post-pandemic tightening cycle. Heading into spring 2026, the overnight rate has settled at a level that, while not a return to the near-zero environment of 2020, represents a genuine improvement in borrowing costs for buyers who were priced out twelve to eighteen months ago.

Variable-rate mortgages have become more attractive again for buyers comfortable with some exposure to future movement. Fixed rates, which the bond market governs more directly, have remained relatively stable. The practical result is that a household qualifying for a mortgage today faces meaningfully lower monthly payments than the same household would have confronted at the rate peak of mid-2023.

Qualifying thresholds have shifted accordingly. The stress test, which requires borrowers to qualify at their contract rate plus two percent, still applies, but the floor has dropped from where it sat during the most restrictive period. Buyers who were told no by their lender in 2023 may find a different conversation waiting for them in 2026. Not every buyer, but a real and growing number of them.

Affordability relative to peak salaries and household incomes in Kamloops still presents a stretch for many buyers. That's not a comfortable fact, but it's an honest one. What's changed is the direction of travel. The affordability picture is improving, not deteriorating.

Who Has the Advantage Right Now

Sellers who bought five or more years ago hold substantial equity and, broadly speaking, don't need to panic. The headline number on their home hasn't reverted to 2019 territory. Many are still sitting on significant appreciation. What some of them haven't fully accepted is that the 2022 offer environment isn't coming back this spring.

The sellers who are winning right now are the ones pricing with precision. They're looking at genuine comparables, not the peak sale from two years ago that still lives in their memory. Their homes are staged, photographed well, and priced to attract real buyers in the first two weeks. Those sellers are moving their properties.

The sellers who are struggling priced to a fantasy and are watching the days-on-market counter climb while they wait for an offer that won't arrive.

Buyers, for their part, are walking into a market with more negotiating leverage than they've held since roughly 2019. That leverage isn't unlimited. On the right property in the right location, competition still shows up. But writing an offer today looks very different from writing one in March 2022. Buyers can breathe. They can think. They can ask for a home inspection without feeling like they've disqualified themselves.

What This Means If You're Buying This Spring

Act with intention rather than urgency. The market rewards prepared buyers, not panicked ones. Get your pre-approval done, understand your actual budget, and start viewing homes with a clear picture of what you need versus what you want.

In terms of property types, townhomes represent compelling value at this moment. The gap between townhome and single-family benchmark pricing is over $150,000, and for buyers who don't need a large yard or specific school catchment, that gap is hard to justify ignoring. Condos in central Kamloops continue to attract younger buyers and investors. Single-family homes in the $600,000 to $700,000 range are moving with reasonable consistency, particularly in Sahali, Brocklehurst, and the expanding developments in Pineview and Westsyde.

If a well-priced home checks your boxes, don't talk yourself into weeks of deliberation. The best-priced properties in this market still attract competing interest. What's changed is that manufactured urgency has mostly left the conversation. Real urgency on a genuinely good property is still real.

The buyers who get burned in this market are the ones waiting for prices to fall another ten percent before they move. That's a bet on a specific future that no one can guarantee. Your housing need is present-tense. The market you're buying into today is measurably more accessible than the one that existed eighteen months ago.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is now a good time to buy in Kamloops, or should I wait for prices to drop further?

Waiting for the bottom is a strategy that sounds sensible and almost never works out as planned. Prices in Kamloops have softened from their peak, rates have come down from theirs, and inventory is at a multi-year high. That combination doesn't guarantee a perfect entry point, but it does mean conditions are materially better for buyers than they were in 2022 or 2023. Timing the market perfectly is a theoretical exercise. Buying when the numbers work for your actual life is a practical one.

How much should I offer below asking price?

It depends entirely on the property, the days on market, and what comparable sales support. Some homes are priced to sell and won't accept lowball offers. Others have been sitting for three weeks because they were overpriced to begin with, and a measured offer below list is appropriate. Your agent should pull the data on every property before you write an offer. The asking price is the seller's opening position, not a fact.

What's the fastest-moving segment of the market right now?

Well-presented single-family homes in the $580,000 to $680,000 range, particularly in established neighbourhoods, tend to move quickly. Turnkey townhomes priced accurately in the $470,000 to $530,000 range are also attracting strong interest. Overpriced properties in any category are sitting.

Do I still need a large down payment in this market?

The minimum down payment rules haven't changed. Five percent on homes under $500,000, with a sliding scale above that. What has changed is the total amount your down payment needs to cover, given that prices have moderated from peak. If you've been saving while prices corrected, your down payment may represent a meaningfully larger percentage of today's purchase price than it would have a few years ago.

Let's Talk About Your Search

If you want a personalized breakdown of what the market looks like for your budget and your priorities, reach out. We'll walk you through current inventory, show you what's sold recently, and help you figure out whether now is the right time for you to move.