Keremeos

Lending in Keremeos

Anyone who has driven Highway 3 between the Coast and the Okanagan knows Keremeos. You inevitably slow down for the fruit stands and the single-lane traffic. It is a quiet agricultural pocket in the Similkameen Valley, sitting about 45 minutes south of Penticton and just west of Osoyoos. The population hovers right around 1,600 people. When we set up Tekamar, we did it to service the towns without stoplights. Keremeos fits that bill perfectly. It is exactly the kind of micro-market we understand inside and out.

For brokers, the files out of this valley are highly predictable because of the demographics. This is a retirement community, plain and simple. The median age is 63, and local household incomes are modest. You are not going to see tech workers or high-earning professionals moving in to bid up real estate. Instead, your files here are almost always fixed-income seniors looking to pull equity for renovations, locals consolidating high-interest debt, or older folks needing clean bridge financing to transition into a nearby care home. When a file comes from Keremeos, you already know the story before you open the application.

The housing stock reflects the valley’s agricultural roots. Over 71% of the market consists of single-detached homes, but you also have a notable segment of movable dwellings—mobile homes make up about 10.5% of the local housing. When a Keremeos deal crosses our desk, we are typically looking at small acreages, hobby farms, or older bungalows. The specific issues that scare off big bank underwriters are completely standard here. We are talking about agricultural zoning, unpermitted outbuildings, and complicated water licenses or well systems. Standard appraisers take forever to get out there, and properties do not liquidate in a weekend the way they do in Kelowna or Vancouver.

Because we fund these deals using our own capital—money from friends, family, and our own pockets—protecting that principal is our top priority. We always have to underwrite for the worst-case scenario, which in this valley means holding a specialized rural property through a slow, quiet winter market. The buyer pool in a town of 1,600 is naturally small. To manage that illiquidity risk, we cap our exposure at 55.0% LTV in Keremeos.

If you have a deal that fits under that 55.0% threshold, we want to look at it. When the local credit union passes on a file because of a bruised credit history or self-employed cash flow that does not tick their boxes, that is where we step in. Keremeos does not experience the wild, speculative price spikes of the central Okanagan, but it also does not suffer from the same dramatic crashes. It is a stable, quiet farming town. If you have a client with solid equity in a Similkameen home who needs straightforward, common-sense private backing, skip the runaround and send us the scenario. We know the ground, and we will give you a straight yes or no quickly.