The first thing most real estate investors look at when evaluating a city is population growth. The logic is direct: more people need more housing, more housing demand supports values, more renters support rental income. It's not wrong. But it's incomplete.
The more important question is who is growing — what demographic is arriving, why they're coming, and specifically whether they are renters or owners. A city that adds 10,000 high-net-worth retirees who all buy properties has a very different impact on the rental market than a city that adds 10,000 working-age families who rent while they save for a down payment.
Kelowna and Kamloops are the two largest cities in the BC Interior, and the conventional wisdom is that Kelowna is the obvious growth story and Kamloops is the also-ran. The data is more nuanced than that.
Corrected 6 October 2026. The first version of this post had the census figures wrong (it called Kamloops a census agglomeration of about 111,000; it's a census metropolitan area of 114,142, and the City of Kamloops itself grew 8.4%). It used a Kamloops benchmark of $545,000 and Kelowna benchmarks of $650,000 and $800,000–$850,000; the Association of Interior REALTORS® figures were $664,400 for Kamloops and District (April 2026) and $1,056,600 for the Central Okanagan (February 2026). It said rental vacancy was under 2% in both cities; CMHC's October 2025 survey put Kamloops at 1.2% and Kelowna at 6.4%. And it claimed migration data I couldn't find. It also named specific employers and projects as growth drivers without a source. Those sections have been rewritten from primary sources or cut back to what I can stand behind, and the conclusion changed where the numbers changed it.
The Headline Numbers
Statistics Canada's 2021 Census — the most recent full count — shows the Kelowna census metropolitan area (CMA) grew 14.0% from 2016 to 2021, from 194,892 to 222,162. That's a strong number by any metric.
The Kamloops CMA grew 10.0% over the same period, from 103,811 to 114,142. The City of Kamloops on its own grew 8.4%, from 90,280 to 97,902. Smaller in absolute terms, slower in percentage terms.
If you stopped there, Kelowna wins. But stopping there is the wrong place to stop.
The rest of this post is about composition: who is arriving, and whether they rent. I don't have published migration data broken down by where people came from and why, so the next two sections are my read of each city's growth, based on the employers and institutions that anchor it. Treat them as an informed view, not a statistic.
Who Is Moving to Kelowna
My read is that Kelowna's growth comes from four overlapping groups.
Retirement and lifestyle migration is the most visible. Kelowna has long attracted people from Alberta and the Lower Mainland at or near retirement, who can sell a house elsewhere and buy in the Okanagan with little or no mortgage. The lake, the wine country and the amenities make it genuinely attractive to that group.
Remote workers added to this in 2020–2022, when people who could keep a coastal salary from home looked for more space for the money. That demand fed the 2021–22 price run across the Okanagan.
UBC Okanagan students and staff. The university is the component most like Kamloops's TRU, and it rents.
A tech and professional-services workforce, which skews younger and is more likely to rent first.
Who Is Moving to Kamloops
Kamloops's growth cohort looks different.
Healthcare workers. Royal Inland Hospital is the referral hospital for the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap, and recruiting nurses, physicians and allied health staff from elsewhere is a constant. That group (30s and 40s, professional income, often with families) tends to rent before buying, and then buy modestly.
Trades and construction workers. Kamloops sits where Highway 1, Highway 5 and two railways meet, so logistics, highway work and large projects draw skilled trades, much of it on project-based work. That group rents.
Thompson Rivers University students and staff. TRU says it serves more than 25,000 students, across its Kamloops and Williams Lake campuses and through Open Learning by distance. Not all of those live in Kamloops, but the on-campus share creates steady student housing demand that is structural, not cyclical.
Working families priced out of coastal and Okanagan markets. The "drive until you qualify" pattern that pushed people from Vancouver to Abbotsford has a BC Interior equivalent. The gap is large: the Association of Interior REALTORS® put the single-family benchmark at $1,056,600 in the Central Okanagan in February 2026, against $664,400 for Kamloops and District in April. That's roughly $390,000 for a comparable typical home, in two cities that both have the schools, healthcare and retail families need.
Why the Composition Difference Matters for Rental Demand
The Kelowna cohort — retirees, lifestyle buyers, remote workers who've cashed out — tilts heavily toward ownership. People who move to Kelowna with proceeds from a Vancouver real estate sale are buying, not renting. This drives appreciation and price, but it doesn't necessarily drive rental demand per capita in proportion to the population growth.
The Kamloops cohort — healthcare workers, trades workers, students, working families — tilts heavily toward renting. Healthcare workers relocating from out of province rent while they settle. Trades workers on project-based employment rent. Students rent. Families moving from another city rent while they figure out the market before committing to a purchase.
The implication is that Kamloops produces more durable rental demand per capita than its slower growth rate would suggest, while Kelowna's faster population growth is partly absorbed into the ownership market rather than the rental market.
This doesn't mean Kelowna has poor rental demand. UBCO, the tech sector, and hospitality workers (Kelowna has a large tourism-adjacent workforce) all rent. But the quality of rental demand — in terms of stability, income reliability, and long-term durability — skews toward Kamloops's employment-driven demographic.
Housing Supply: Where the Two Cities Diverged
This is where the two cities have diverged most, and it's the part I got wrong in the first version of this post.
CMHC's Rental Market Survey counts purpose-built private apartments every October. Kelowna's universe grew from 8,788 units in October 2024 to 10,150 in October 2025, an extra 1,362 units in a year. Over the same period, Kelowna's apartment vacancy rate rose from 3.8% to 6.4%. It had been 1.3% in October 2023.
Kamloops added units too, going from 4,326 to 4,792 (466 more). Its vacancy rate went the other way, from 1.4% to 1.2%.
| CMHC, private apartments | Kamloops CMA | Kelowna CMA |
|---|---|---|
| Vacancy, October 2023 | 1.3% | 1.3% |
| Vacancy, October 2024 | 1.4% | 3.8% |
| Vacancy, October 2025 | 1.2% | 6.4% |
| Units in the survey, October 2025 | 4,792 | 10,150 |
| Average two-bedroom rent, October 2025 | $1,679 | $2,118 |
I'm not going to claim the new supply caused Kelowna's vacancy to rise; the survey doesn't say that. But the two facts sit side by side, and for an investor they matter. In October 2023 the two cities had identical vacancy rates. Two years later, Kelowna's rental market was far looser than Kamloops's.
What to Watch Next
Rather than predict, here's what would change my view, and where it gets published:
- CMHC's October 2026 Rental Market Survey, published each winter. If Kelowna's vacancy keeps rising and Kamloops's stays near 1%, the gap is structural. If Kamloops starts to loosen as its new units fill, it isn't.
- The 2026 Census. Statistics Canada counted in May 2026, and the first population figures will show whether the 2016–2021 growth rates held.
- AIR's monthly releases for both markets. A narrowing price gap would weaken the "drive until you qualify" pull toward Kamloops.
- Hiring at the anchors: Royal Inland and Kelowna General, TRU and UBC Okanagan. Neither city is a one-industry town, and both have institutional employers that don't move.
The Conclusion: Different Strengths, Different Investor Calculus
Kelowna wins on total population growth and aspirational demand. If you're betting on long-term capital appreciation and can afford a single-family benchmark above $1 million (the Central Okanagan figure was $1,056,600 in February 2026), Kelowna has strong drivers.
Kamloops wins on rental tightness, investor affordability, and what I believe is the durability of its rental cohort. A working nurse or a TRU faculty member is a more stable long-term tenant than a remote worker who might decide to return to Vancouver. At a $664,400 single-family benchmark, Kamloops isn't cash-flow positive for a leveraged investor either — at 20% down and the Bank of Canada's average uninsured 5-year rate (4.17% in April 2026), the mortgage alone is around $2,840 a month. But it's far less negative than Kelowna at more than $1 million, and its vacancy is a fifth of Kelowna's.
For a first investment property, Kamloops is the stronger choice. Not because Kelowna is a bad market — it isn't — but because the numbers work in Kamloops in a way that requires more capital, more leverage, or more risk to make work in Kelowna. And because the rental demand in Kamloops is driven by employment and education anchors that are not going anywhere.
As a second or third property, with more capital and more equity, Kelowna becomes more interesting. Start with the market you can actually underwrite.
Sources: Statistics Canada — 2021 Census Profile · AIR — Kamloops market, April 2026 (5 May 2026) · AIR — Interior market, February 2026 (5 March 2026) · CMHC — Rental Market Survey data tables, British Columbia · Bank of Canada — interest rates for new lending by chartered banks · TRU — about
Written by Jagatjeet, as part of a public BC Interior real estate learning journey. Published 16 May 2026. Corrected 6 October 2026. Updated 7 October 2026. Jagatjeet is working toward a BC real estate licence and is not a licensed realtor. Nothing here is financial, legal or tax advice.