A 60-day recap of every active, pending and sold single-family detached home in Nanaimo: the first report of its kind built directly from our own Market Intelligence Dashboard.
60-Day Recap · 592 Listings AnalyzedAcross all 415 active single-family homes in Nanaimo against 177 combined pending and sold sales over the last 60 days, the market-wide absorption rate works out to 88.5 sales per month, or 4.7 months of supply: a broadly balanced market on paper. That single number is an average, though, and the market underneath it is running at two very different speeds depending on price point and location.
By raw activity, North Nanaimo dominates, with the most active listings and the most combined sales of any sub-area. But volume and velocity are different things, and the fastest-clearing pockets of the market are smaller areas with tighter, lower-priced inventory.
| Area | Active | Pending + Sold (60d) | Median Active Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Nanaimo | 81 | 35 | $1,090,000 |
| Departure Bay | 39 | 20 | $965,000 |
| South Nanaimo | 48 | 18 | $711,900 |
| Pleasant Valley | 11 | 14 | $899,900 |
| University District | 18 | 13 | $859,450 |
| Central Nanaimo | 19 | 13 | $735,000 |
Source: Market Intelligence Dashboard CSV, Sept 2026, 60-day pending + sold window. Area counts computed via csv_stats.
Months of inventory calculated per area (active supply ÷ monthly absorption rate) tells a sharper story than volume alone. Areas with smaller combined sales counts are flagged: a single extra sale there would swing the number meaningfully, so treat those as directional rather than definitive.
n = combined pending + sold transactions behind each ratio. "Thin" means under 10 transactions: read as directional, not definitive. South Nanaimo is flagged "watch" because its price point is low enough that it should be moving faster than 5.3 months, and it's backed by a solid 18-sale sample, so the softness there looks real rather than noise.
Cross-referencing each area's months of inventory against its median active price shows a clean break: not a gradual slowdown, but a genuine line in the sand.
Reading it straight: homes priced under roughly $1 million in Nanaimo are moving in 1.6 to 3.2 months, a genuinely hot market. Homes priced above roughly $1.3 million are sitting for 10 to 11 months in the areas where that's the norm. The highest-price readings come from thinner sample sizes (2 to 7 transactions) and should be treated as directional, but they're consistent across four separate areas, which is a pattern, not a fluke.
No-stairs living is winning. Ranchers account for 26% of pending and sold deals in the last 60 days, ahead of Ground Level Entry at 18%. Combined with Ground Level Entry (18%), single-level-dominant layouts make up over 40% of all transactions. Buyers are voting clearly for accessibility and simplicity.
Sellers are asking a median of $413 per square foot but achieving $387 at the closing table, a gap that lines up with the price-adjustment pattern below. The strongest achieved $/sqft figures are in the fast-moving, sub-$1M areas: Pleasant Valley ($449), University District ($442) and Central Nanaimo ($430). That's further confirmation that the lower price band isn't just moving faster, it's holding value per square foot better too.
Active listings: median original list price and median current price are identical at $949,900, meaning most active homes haven't been repriced yet. The modest gap in the average ($1,160,307 to $1,145,985) comes from a handful of reduced listings skewing the mean, not a broad market trend.
Sold listings: median original list $817,500, median sold price $795,000: a typical concession of about $22,500, or 2.75% off original ask. On a list-to-sold basis, homes that do sell are closing at roughly 97% of their original list price.
What this means for pricing strategy: the market isn't demanding huge concessions, it's demanding the right number on day one. Homes priced correctly out of the gate are closing within a few percentage points of ask. Homes that aren't are the ones sitting in the 10+ month pool above.
Nationally, home sales are down 6.9% year-over-year with the MLS Home Price Index off 3.0%, and inventory sits at 4.8 months (CREA, Aug 2026). Financing has gotten more expensive even without a Bank of Canada hike: the 5-year Government of Canada bond yield has climbed to roughly 3.70% from 2.77% a year ago, pushing the posted conventional 5-year mortgage rate to 6.09% (Trading Economics / Bank of Canada, Sept 2026), even though the overnight policy rate itself has held at 2.25%. Consumer confidence is sitting flat at the neutral line, with the Bloomberg Nanos index at 50.88 for the week of Sept 25 (Bloomberg/Nanos, Sept 2026).
Against that backdrop, Nanaimo's own fundamentals look comparatively resilient. Population growth of 1.14% year-over-year is outpacing both Canada (+0.5%) and BC (+0.1% QoQ) (StatCan, as of July 1, 2026 / July 1, 2025), and unemployment at 5.7% is noticeably lower than both the provincial (6.5%) and national (6.4%) rates (StatCan LFS, Aug 2026). That combination of real underlying demand inside a nationally softening market is consistent with what the local data shows directly: genuine heat under $1 million, real buyer resistance above $1.3 million.