Photo: The Canadian Press
There are various economic factors that contribute to incredibly consistent changes in the Okanagan Shuswap real estate market cycle.
Basically, there must be reasons why people start to buy and why they stop buying at regular intervals.
Human beings have different risk tolerances. For instance, by 2012 buyers were few and far between. The market had been fairly stagnant for two or three years. Slowly, in 2013, we started to see cutting edge investors come back to the table. These are the people who have a high tolerance for risk. The market started to move.
As people heard the press reports of the market turning around, more and more people began to put their toes in the market. By 2015 and 2016 even people with very little tolerance for risk were jumping in. The year 2016 was the most active market we have ever seen in the Okanagan Shuswap. When things start to move too quickly, those savvy investors who jumped in first started to jump out. The next groups followed.
This cycle seems to take about nine to 12 years. The proof? The last five peaks in the Okanagan Shuswap real estate market are as follows: 1975, 1984, 1995, 2007 and 2016.
The market truly travels in cycles of nine to 12 years.
Bill Hubbard is a real estate broker and the owner and broker of a four-office real estate firm in the Okanagan-Shuswap. He has been in real estate for 28 years and has been an owner and broker in Vernon for 20 years. At almost 60 years old he is just as passionate about real estate as the day he started.
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