It’s still tough to make sales in the Okanagan housing market, but the developer behind a massive, multi-phase development is tapping into a sustained demand from out-of-region markets to keep the project moving forward. 

Macdonald Communities has sold just under 50 per cent of The Summit, a single-family subdivision with 57 home sites on the hillside above Okanagan Lake. The Summit is part of their nine-phase master plan called Lakestone that will include 1,365 homes if fully realized.

Vancouver-based Macdonald took over the project around 2010 and launched their own master plan in 2012.

It includes a mix of single-family houses, townhomes, condos, two resident clubs, hiking trails and Beacon Park. Views of Okanagan Lake, Wood Lake, Duck Lake and Kalamalka Lake are possible from a viewpoint pavilion in the community, said Jonathon Campbell, development manager with the company. 

Buyers of The Summit will be introduced to a group of six preferred builders listed on the project website, Campbell told RENX Homes in an interview. Certain home designs will also appear on the site. 

"They work with the builder of their choice to select a plan, work on the budget, all the specifications," he said. 

Strong demand from out-of-province buyers

"We're currently at just under 50 per cent sold through pre-sales, and once we get (most) of the way through October, all the home sites will be ready to build," he said. 

Lakestone post-purchase buyer data from a Macdonald survey found that Alberta and Ontario are the top out-of-province buyer markets for the development, at 30 per cent and 14 per cent respectively. Buyers from the Lower Mainland make up about 26 per cent of buyers in the community while the remainder are from the Okanagan and other areas. 

Sixty-four per cent of buyers were either actively relocating to the Okanagan or planning for future retirement there, a sign this is a permanent lifestyle move rather than a secondary purchase.

Okanagan sales figures stable, but fire season didn’t help

August 2026 data released by the Association of Interior Realtors showed that benchmark home prices remained stable in the Okanagan region, with value holding firm across all major housing segments. 

Total units sold in August were 362, down 5.24 per cent from the same month, last year. Dollar volume dropped by 9.38 per cent to $276.87 million year-over-year, while new listings dropped by a notable 18.88 per cent, to 838 during August. 

Active inventory came down 8.81 per cent to 3,953. 

The association noted that August experienced a temporary reduction in activity due to severe wildfires in the region that shifted local focus away from real estate transactions. 

Wildfire activity in the region "absolutely comes up" in sales discussions, Campbell said. "It's impossible not to come up when you have prospective clients coming in and the sky is filled with smoke." 

He said a wildfire that started in West Kelowna in 2023 quickly jumped the lake to Okanagan Centre and burned through the woods and grasslands of Lakestone. No structures in the community were lost though.

Campbell said that was thanks to the efforts of firefighters but also, perhaps, to strategies to make the neighbourhood FireSmart. "We walk (buyers) through all our FireSmart initiatives that start with our design guidelines," he said.

FireSmart is a national program that helps Canadians increase neighbourhood resilience to wildfire and minimize its negative impacts.

Prospective buyers are also talked through forest fire mitigation work the company does with specialists, Campbell said.

He said building materials restrictions, strategic home spacing and fuel reduction are part of their approach in Lakestone. 

Market remains challenging 

Many other challenges have been working against them in the market, Campbell said. "It's been a gradual shift of different taxes, different policies, different restrictions that have all come together to create a difficult market."

He said geopolitical unrest and upset around the world have damaged the economy and slowed down the housing market in Canada. "We've all been here before, and everything is cyclical, and we'll come back,” he said. “But it's been a difficult year-and-a-half that's really (come to a) crescendo this year."

But demand for the Okanagan lifestyle remains predictable, he said. 

People want to retire in the Okanagan, which has plenty of activities and a milder climate compared to other parts of Canada, Campbell said. “A view of the lake sure doesn't hurt," he said. "The Okanagan has always been and always will continue to be a special, special place."

In business for more than 40 years, Macdonald has been building projects in the Okanagan since the mid-2000s. Among their other projects in the region is HighPointe, a neighbourhood above Kelowna with fully serviced homesites developed in the mid-2000s.

They also built a sprawling hilltop, master-planned community above Winfield called The Lakes, with a mix of single-family homes, condos and townhomes.