Winter in Kamloops, is it slow?

[Brad Fournier]

Hi, my name is Brad and I'm as new as it comes to investing in real estate. I live in Langley, work full time in Richmond and now invest in Kamloops. We took possession of our first property Jan 1, rented it back to the owners for half a month then spent 3 solid weeks renovating the house into a 3up 2 down 2 suite house.

We have a property manager, who was able to get the basement rented, but seems to be having a harder time renting the top. I'm pretty confident its priced to market, and its nice, fresh and clean so in my opinion it should show well. Their reasoning is that its very slow right now. I know we will find a good tenant eventually, I just thought there would be more interest since its supposedly "less than 1% vacancy".

So I thought I'd finally make a post and see if there was any appetite for a discussion in the Kamloops area. I'm interested in hearing how others are doing? Whats working, whats not. Is there anyone who lives in the lower mainland and has properties up in kamloops or surrounding areas? (Kelowna, Vernon, Barriere, Logan Lake, etc) What are peoples experiences good and bad with property managers in the area?

I'll talk about anything, here or by PM :)

-Brad

[Dallas Trufyn]

We lived in Kamloops for over 17 years, but have moved to Alberta. We had two properties there and rented them, but have sold them to invest elsewhere. Kamloops is a great city, but the RE market there seems 'flat' over periods of time. It doesn't seem to have the exciting ups and downs that the Okanagan, or Shuswap does. 

That being said, one can invest literally anywhere, as long as the numbers work. As for renters, we didn't get a lot of response and the rents were not what we would have liked. This was 3-5 years ago, but sounds similar today? I've lived in Chilliwack, Kelowna and Kamloops. As much as I love truly love Kamloops, it's not a place people are dying to move to and for that reason it seems to take a little more effort to get new and good renters? In places that are more transient, getting renters is easier, as you simply have more to choose from. Just throwing in my two cents...