“The lowest listing right now in Black Mountain is $192,900. We are so low on inventory, it’s unbelievable,” she said.

Housing supply is 20 per cent lower than last year in the Okanagan. Gebhard doesn’t have an explanation why there are only 676 active residential listings now compared to 831 last year. It could be people have already sold and moved, taking advantage of low interest rates. It could be people are waiting.

As a consequence of the depleted supply, house prices are edging up. Last month, the average house price was $236,183. This month, it’s $245,441.

Still, it’s not pushing buyers away. The market is still hot.

There was a slight decrease in home sales in September from 217 last year to 213 this year. Given the Okanagan Mountain Park fire in August and the evacuation of about one-third of Kelowna on and off for a couple of weeks, Gebhard said those figures are quite good.

“We couldn’t even show a huge portion of our product for two to three weeks,” she said.

“I’m surprised how good it is. I’m surprised how little impact the fire had.”

Initially, there were concerns that home sales wouldn’t go through because buyers wouldn’t be able to get new homeowner insurance policies.

Insurance companies stopped giving out new policies for most homes in the area.

But, Gebhard said she hadn’t heard about any sales held up because of that. Most companies seemed to be allowing people to renew old policies.