Who Buys in the Missions, by Budget: 318 Sales

In the twelve months to July 2026, nearly a quarter of detached sales across the four Mission neighbourhoods happened under $1 million, and 42% of them landed between $1 million and $1.5 million. Brian Buffini’s 2026 research puts boomers at 42% of buyers and the average first-time buyer at a projected 41 years old. His figures say who is buying; the numbers below say what each budget actually gets you here.

Buffini’s mid-year figures had millennials at 26% of buyers, down from 29% a year earlier, with the average first-time buyer’s age climbing from 33 in 2019 to a projected 41 this year. That isn’t a bleak statistic once you look at what it means: buyers are arriving later, and arriving with more behind them. In the Missions, where the pooled detached median is $1,265,000, that matters.

Here is what the local record shows, measured across 318 detached sales in Upper Mission, Kettle Valley, Lower Mission and Crawford Estates in the twelve months to 31 July 2026, from the Interior REALTORS® Matrix system.

The entry point is real, and it is mostly in Lower Mission

Price band	Sales	Share
Under $1M	76	24%
$1M to $1.5M	132	42%
$1.5M to $2M	62	19%
$2M to $3M	31	10%
$3M and up	17	5%

Nearly a quarter of everything that changed hands did so under a million dollars. Of those 76 sales, 50 were in Lower Mission, which has the smallest homes of the four across all its sales: a median of 2,451 finished square feet against 3,397 in Upper Mission. If your budget stops short of seven figures, Lower Mission is where the Missions are open to you, and the lakeshore and the rec park come with it.

Upper Mission had 16 sales under $1 million over the same year, and Kettle Valley 9. They exist. They are just not the bulk of either neighbourhood.

The middle band is the market

The $1 million to $1.5 million band took 132 of the 318 sales, more than any other single band and 42% of the whole year. If Buffini’s later, better-funded buyer exists here, this is the band where I’d expect to meet them, because it’s where a first home’s equity reaches in the Missions.

The number that surprises people: across the full year, Upper Mission had the cheapest square footage of the four neighbourhoods at a median of $403 per foot, against $472 in Lower Mission. Bigger house, lower price per foot, higher total price. Choosing between the two is really a choice between size and location, and the per-foot figures make that trade visible instead of leaving it to feel.

The third buyer nobody plans for

Boomers at 42% of buyers is the figure that should reshape a search. That buyer is rarely after the five-bedroom two-storey. My own read, from the homes I show, is that they ask for a main-floor primary bedroom and low upkeep, and the Missions have far more two-storey family homes than single-level ones. If that’s your search, start with the Kelowna rancher homes list rather than filtering a general search by hand.

For a seller, that is the useful half of Buffini’s numbers. If you own a rancher or a walkout rancher in the Missions, the buyer group his research is describing is the one most likely to want it.

The longer price history for each neighbourhood, month by month, is on my market report.