How to Read a Kelowna Market Stat Without Being Fooled

In February 2026, the median Upper Mission home took 126 days to sell. In April and May, it took 29. Same neighbourhood, same year, roughly two months apart. If you read either number on its own you would draw a completely wrong conclusion about the market.

I publish a lot of market statistics on this site. This is the post about how to read them without being fooled — including by mine.

The same year, month by month

Month, 2026	Median days to sell
January	84
February	126
March	32
April	29
May	29
June	73

The honest summary of that column is “about 52 days, and it moves around a lot”. But you could quote February and write a story about a stalling market, or quote May and write one about a market moving briskly, and both would be technically accurate and completely misleading.

Three reasons small-area statistics swing this hard

The sample is small. Upper Mission sells on the order of ten to twenty detached homes a month. A median calculated on twelve sales moves substantially if two of them happen to be listings that sat since the previous autumn.

Winter months carry the carryover. January and February close the homes that did not sell in the autumn — which are, by definition, the slower ones. That is why the first two months of the year look so poor in almost every series on this site, and why comparing February against May tells you about seasonality rather than about the market changing.

One unusual property distorts everything. A single home that took nine months lands in one month’s figure and not the others. In a twelve-sale month it moves the median outright.

Four questions to ask about any local market stat

How many sales is it based on? If the answer is under about thirty, it describes specific houses rather than a market. Crawford Estates sells roughly 21 homes a year — no annual percentage change for that neighbourhood means much, including mine.

Is it a median or an average? Averages get pulled around by a single $5M sale. Medians are steadier. Most of the misleading real estate statistics you will read are averages presented without saying so.

What period does it cover, and does it compare like with like? A February-to-May comparison in a seasonal market is not a trend. Year-over-year on the same months is the minimum honest comparison.

Did the mix change? This is the one that catches almost everyone. Lower Mission’s median fell 7.6% this year, which sounds like falling values — but its share of sales under $800,000 went from 2% to 11%. Different houses sold. The neighbourhood did not lose 7.6%.

What to do with this

Use market statistics to set expectations, not to price a house. “Plan for roughly two months” is a sound conclusion from this data. “My house will sell in 52 days” is not, and neither is “the market fell 7.6% so my house is worth 7.6% less”.

For anything that depends on a specific number — an offer, a list price, a decision about timing — you need the comparables for that house, on that street, at that price point. That is a different exercise from reading a neighbourhood median, and no amount of aggregate data substitutes for it.

The numbers behind this

Interior REALTORS® Matrix, Residential, Single Family – Detached, Central Okanagan, Upper Mission sub-area, January – June 2026. Pulled 29 July 2026. Aggregate market statistics only.

The current figures across these neighbourhoods are in the market report, with neighbourhood detail on Upper Mission homes for sale and Lower Mission.