Home Inspections in Lake Country

Lake Country starts about half an hour south of us — roughly thirty kilometres down the highway from our Vernon base, and the first community we reach on the way to Kelowna. Oyama is close enough that we are often through it twice in a day.

It has also been the fastest-growing municipality in British Columbia twice — in 2014, and again in 2021 — with its population up 22% between the 2016 and 2021 censuses. All of that growth is landing directly on top of orchard country that has been farmed for well over a century. It makes Lake Country one of the more interesting places in the valley to inspect, because on any given week we might be in a house that is eighteen months old and a house that is eighty.

Four communities, one municipality

Winfield, Oyama, Okanagan Centre and Carr’s Landing were four separate places until they amalgamated in 1995, and they still read that way on the ground.

Tell us which one you are buying in and we will already have a shortlist in our heads before we arrive.

Some of the newest houses in the valley

Lake Country has roughly 6,850 dwellings and is planning for thousands more. Lakestone on its own is a 1,365-home project, and a much larger plan has been proposed on the McCoubrey Plateau.

New builds need their own kind of attention, because new does not mean finished and it certainly does not mean correct. On a house under five years old we are looking hard at grading and backfill settlement, drainage away from a foundation that has not been through many freshets yet, attic ventilation and whether the insulation actually covers what it is supposed to, deficiency work that got signed off in a hurry, and whether any of your new-home warranty milestones are still open to you. A new construction inspection is a different job from a pre-purchase inspection on a 1978 house, and it should be.

Orchards, acreage, and everything else on the lot

Just under half the land in Lake Country sits inside the Provincial Agricultural Land Reserve. Cherries, apples, pears, peaches, grapes.

Buying here often means buying considerably more than a house: a shop, a packing shed, an old barn, irrigation lines, a well, a septic field, outbuildings that somebody’s uncle wired in 1974 and nobody has looked at since. The houses are large too — 71% of Lake Country dwellings have three or more bedrooms and 39% have four or more. Big houses on big lots take time to do properly.

This is the same work we do every week on the acreages north of us, around Coldstream, Spallumcheen and Lumby — the wells, the septic fields, the outbuildings and the additions built over three decades are the North Okanagan’s standard housing stock, not an exception we make room for.

So tell us what is actually on the property when you book. Not to talk you out of anything — so we can scope the appointment honestly and you know exactly what is and is not included before we turn up.

Buying acreage? Tell us what is on the land and we will scope it properly.

Water on three sides

Okanagan Lake to the west, all of Wood Lake and the southern end of Kalamalka Lake inside the municipal boundary, and a lot of the residential land sitting on hillside above one of them. Same short list as anywhere on a slope: retaining walls, the cut-and-fill line under the house, and where the surface water goes when it rains hard.

What we get called for in Lake Country

Book your Lake Country inspection

Give us the address, the date, and a quick description of what is on the land. Call or text (250) 212-4025, or book online.

We look at your home with our heads so you can look at it with your heart.