Despite housing prices, more and more people are snatching up property in the Okanagan.

The Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board (OMREB) is reporting an all-time record of 1,069 residential sales for April, up 34.3 per cent from the same month last year.

The previous record was 1,015 unit sales recorded way back in May 2007.

The average home price was up 13.4 per cent from 2015 to $459,595. The dollar volume of residential sales climbed 52.3 per cent to $491.3 million compared to April of last year.

“Housing demand in the Okanagan is exceptionally strong this spring,” said Anthony Bastiaanssen, OMREB President and active REALTOR in the central Okanagan. “In addition to an increase in the number of local buyers, relocations from the Lower Mainland and other regions of Canada are becoming increasingly common.”

Bastiaanssen said demand for housing has reached record highs, and there are fewer and fewer listings, making it a seller’s market.

“This imbalance is leading to upward pressure on home prices in the region,” he explained.

OMREB’s three diverse markets – Central Okanagan, North Okanagan, and Shuswap-Revelstoke – have had different results recently.

In the central zone, from Peachland to Lake Country, transactions of property were up 47.7 per cent to 821 units.

The sale of single family homes increased 31.2 per cent to 383 units over the same period.

The average number of days to sell a single family home in the Central Okanagan in April was 50 days, down from 63 days in April 2015.

There were 932 new residential listings in the Central Okanagan in April, down 6.4 per cent from a year ago, while new single family listings were up 11.5 per cent to 496 units during the same time.