Ranked list · 2026

Best places for a summer home in BC

A summer place has to pass tests a year-round house never faces: a vacancy tax on empty homes, rules on renting it out, how hot July really gets, how far it is from the city you live in, and whether a fire has emptied the town lately. We ran seventeen BC lake and ocean spots through six of those tests, a point each. Shuswap Lake took first and second. The whole card is here, so you can argue with it.

By Justin Gaspari, REALTOR®, CIR Realty · October 2026

The short answer

The best places to buy a summer home in BC, scored

1Blind Bay and the South Shuswap, Shuswap Lake. 6 of 6. July high 28.5°, typical house $747,500, Calgary 6.4 h, Vancouver 4.7 h.
2Sicamous, Shuswap and Mara lakes. 6 of 6. July high 28.5°, typical house $747,500, Calgary 5.6 h, Vancouver 5.2 h.
3Christina Lake, Christina Lake. 4 of 6. July high 29.2°, typical house $638,300, Calgary 8.2 h, Vancouver 6.7 h.
4Nelson, Kootenay Lake. 4 of 6. July high 28.0°, typical house $638,300, Calgary 6.5 h, Vancouver 8.5 h.
5Invermere, Windermere Lake. 4 of 6. July high ~25°, typical house $638,300*, Calgary 3 h, Vancouver ~9 h.

Why the Shuswap? The lake isn’t even the warmest one here (Osoyoos is). It wins because it’s the only place that clears all six tests at once: outside the speculation tax, outside the rental restriction, hot in July, under $800,000 for a typical house, a day’s drive from both cities, and never evacuated. The Okanagan’s big names score two or three. They’re hot and gorgeous, but a house runs over a million dollars, the speculation tax applies, and most were under an evacuation order in 2023 or 2026. Every one of those is a public fact with a source at the bottom of the page.

The scorecard

Seventeen places, six tests

Place	No spec tax	Can rent short-term	July 27°+	6.5 h of both cities	House under $800K	No evac order	Score
1. Blind Bay and the South ShuswapShuswap Lake	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	6/6
2. SicamousShuswap and Mara lakes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	6/6
3. Christina LakeChristina Lake	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	4/6
4. NelsonKootenay Lake	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	4/6
5. InvermereWindermere Lake	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	4/6
Salmon ArmShuswap Lake	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	4/6
OsoyoosOsoyoos Lake	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	3/6
Harrison Hot SpringsHarrison Lake	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	3/6
Cultus LakeCultus Lake	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	3/6
TofinoPacific Ocean	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	3/6
VernonOkanagan and Kalamalka lakes	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	2/6
KelownaOkanagan Lake	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	2/6
PeachlandOkanagan Lake	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	2/6
PentictonOkanagan and Skaha lakes	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	2/6
SummerlandOkanagan Lake	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	2/6
Lake CountryOkanagan, Wood and Kalamalka lakes	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	1/6
ParksvilleStrait of Georgia	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	1/6

One point per test. No spec tax: outside the speculation and vacancy tax area on the gov.bc.ca list (December 2025). Can rent short-term: not subject to the provincial principal-residence rule (gov.bc.ca, September 2026); local bylaws still apply. July 27°+: Environment Canada July mean daily high of 27°C or more. 6.5 h of both cities: within about six and a half hours by road of both Calgary and Vancouver, tourism-board figures where published, trip-planner estimates otherwise. House under $800K: the regional MLS single-family benchmark, summer 2026 (* = a blended regional figure, no place-specific one published). No evac order: no wildfire evacuation order covering the place from 2023 to 2026; alerts do not count. Ties go to the lower price, then the hotter July, then the shorter drive. Sun Peaks sat out: no lake.

No. 1 · 6 of 6

Blind Bay and the South Shuswap

Drone flight from Shuswap Lake Golf Course up to the lake-view lots at The Highlands at Blind Bay, a summer home location outside the BC speculation tax — From the golf course up to the entrance lots, October 1, 2026. Marina five minutes one way, course ten the other.

The south shore of Shuswap Lake, 25 minutes west of Salmon Arm, is unincorporated, and that one fact does most of the work. Blind Bay, Sorrento and Eagle Bay sit in a regional district electoral area, so they’re outside the speculation and vacancy tax that now covers Salmon Arm, Kelowna and the whole Okanagan, and outside the provincial principal-residence rule on short-term rentals. On a vacation home worth the regional benchmark, $747,500, that tax alone would be about $7,475 a year at the 2026 rate.

A July afternoon averages 28.5°C at the Salmon Arm station, the marina is five minutes away and the golf course ten. Calgary is about six hours twenty by trip planner, Vancouver about four hours forty, no ferry either way. New serviced lake-view lots at The Highlands start at $197,000 if you’d rather build the summer place than buy someone else’s cabin.

We’ll be straight about two things. Shuswap Lake runs cooler than Osoyoos or Windermere, around 19°C in the readings we found, which is swimmable from July and better for wakeboarding than floating. And the regional district is still settling how it permits short-term rentals (temporary-use permits today, a zoning change under discussion), so if renting is part of the plan, call the CSRD planning desk before you sign.

No. 2 · 6 of 6

Sicamous

Sicamous is the other end of our lake. It sits on the channel between Shuswap and Mara lakes, calls itself the Houseboat Capital of Canada, and backs it with three rental fleets and the biggest marina on the Shuswap. It’s a small municipality, so it is outside the speculation tax and named exempt from the provincial rental rule, and it’s the closest point on the lake to Calgary, about five hours forty. Same benchmark as Blind Bay, same July heat. The difference is the town: Sicamous runs on summer traffic and goes quiet in October, while Blind Bay has a year-round community, a golf course and Salmon Arm’s hospital 25 minutes away. The District licenses short-term rentals and limits them to certain zones, so check the map first.

No. 3 · 4 of 6

Christina Lake

A long, narrow lake in the Boundary country east of Grand Forks, with a reputation as the warmest tree-lined lake in BC (the community site says 22°C, others quote up to 26 in August). It sits in a regional district electoral area, so no speculation tax and no provincial rental rule, and the Kootenay-Boundary benchmark of $638,300 ties it with Nelson for the cheapest water on the card. The misses are hard ones: about eight hours from Calgary and nearly seven from Vancouver, and the Spaulding Creek fire put the area under an evacuation order in September 2024. Kootenay folks, go for it. Everyone else, look at the drive first.

No. 4 · 4 of 6

Nelson and Kootenay Lake

Tied for the cheapest water here at $638,300, outside the speculation tax, 28°C on a July afternoon, and no order has touched the townsite since 2023. Kootenay Lake has seven public launches and a West Arm that stays glassy most mornings. Nelson is named in the provincial principal-residence rule, though, so a second home there can’t be a short-term rental while you’re away, and Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism puts Calgary at six and a half hours and Vancouver at eight and a half. That second number keeps most coast buyers away.

No. 5 · 4 of 6

Invermere and Windermere Lake

Albertans call this one theirs. Travel Columbia Valley puts it at 260 kilometres and three hours from the city, which is why half the plates in July are Alberta’s. Windermere is shallow and warm, about 25°C in the community monitoring reports, among the warmest swims in the province, and Invermere is outside the speculation tax and named exempt from the rental rule. A July afternoon only averages about 25°C in the valley, Vancouver is nine hours off, and no Invermere-only benchmark is published; the blended Kootenay figure of $638,300 is what we scored on, and a local brokerage quotes a much higher Columbia Valley number we couldn’t verify. We’d budget higher than the card shows.

From the hill, October 2026

What it actually looks like

Six tests say Shuswap. Three frames from the October shoot say what you get, captioned by zone rather than lot number because that is how the shoot was done.

The south rim and centre of The Highlands Phase 3 from the air with Shuswap Lake to the left, Blind Bay — The loop from the south, lake on the left.

A green and pond at Shuswap Lake Golf Course below The Highlands, Blind Bay — The course at the bottom of the hill, reached by underpass.

Shuswap Lake at sunrise from a cleared building lot on The Highlands hillside, Blind Bay — The view from this side of the hill, not from any one lot.

The test most buyers miss

The speculation tax in BC, and where a summer home escapes it

The speculation and vacancy tax started in 2018 as a half-percent levy on empty homes in Metro Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna and a few other cities. It has grown twice since. The list now takes in Vernon, Lake Country, Peachland, Penticton, Summerland, Salmon Arm, Kamloops, Courtenay, Comox, Parksville and Qualicum Beach, and the rate for Canadian owners doubled to 1 percent for the 2026 year. A second home that sits empty more than six months a year, inside the area, pays it on its full assessed value, every year.

Which is why we gave it its own column. The tax applies to listed municipalities. Blind Bay, Sorrento and Eagle Bay are in a regional district electoral area, Sicamous is a village the list never reached, and Osoyoos, Nelson, Invermere and Christina Lake are off it too. Same lakes as the taxed towns, sometimes the same shoreline, without the annual bill. The Province updates the list in December. Check it before you write an offer, not after.

Salmon Arm, by the way, scores four, not six, because it’s a city of 20,000 and inside both the tax and the rental rule. Same lake. Twenty-five minutes west. No bill. Osoyoos would win on heat alone (31.6°C July afternoons, a lake the Town calls Canada’s warmest), but it’s in the rental rule, 727 kilometres from Calgary, and was ordered out in July 2023.

Come and see it

Build the summer place instead of buying one

Shuswap Lake Golf Course and Shuswap Lake below the lots at The Highlands at Blind Bay

Most summer homes on the Shuswap are somebody’s old cabin at a resale price. The Highlands at Blind Bay is 60 serviced lake-view lots from Blind Bay Developments Ltd., from $197,000, on the south rim above the lake. Take the lot and build when you’re ready, or pair it with a move-in-ready plan. Either way the land is outside the speculation tax and outside the rental rule, and the marina, the beaches and the golf course are minutes down the hill.

Start with the lots for sale, each with its own price, view and survey plan. Our lakefront vs. lake-view guide explains why we built up the hill rather than on the shore, and the cost-to-build guide puts numbers on the house. Read about living in Blind Bay, or register and we’ll send new releases and pricing as they come. The sales centre is open Friday to Sunday, 11 to 2. Come for a visit.

Keep reading

Related guides and places

Best lake towns in BCThe five people are actually moving to, by BC Stats.
Best places to retire in BCSeventeen towns scored on who retires there, hospital access, winters, price, golf and growth.
Lakefront vs. lake-view in the ShuswapWhy a lot up the hill often gives you the bigger view for far less.
Houseboating on Shuswap LakeWhat a week on the water here looks like.
Life on Shuswap LakeBoating, fishing, golf and beaches, season by season.
Living in SicamousThe houseboat end of the lake.
Living in SorrentoThe next community west along the south shore.
Fishing Shuswap LakeWhat you catch, where and when.
Homes and build plansMove-in-ready plans for the lots.
Shuswap buyer FAQServicing, drive times, taxes and the rest.

Summer home in BC FAQ

Questions we get asked

Where is the best place in BC to buy a summer home?

Shuswap Lake, on our six-point card. Blind Bay and the South Shuswap come first, Sicamous second, and both score six of six: outside the speculation and vacancy tax, outside the provincial short-term rental rule, 28.5 degrees on an average July afternoon, within about six and a half hours of both Calgary and Vancouver, a regional single-family benchmark under $800,000, and no evacuation order since 2023. Nothing else on the list passes all six. Christina Lake, Nelson and Invermere round out the five at four of six.

Does the BC speculation and vacancy tax apply to a vacation home?

Usually, yes, if the home is inside one of the listed areas. For 2026 the rate is 1 percent of assessed value a year for Canadian owners (not the 0.5 percent most people remember) and 3 percent for foreign owners. It applies to a home that is neither your principal residence nor rented out for at least six months of the year, with some exemptions. The list now takes in Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country, Peachland, Penticton, Summerland, Vernon, Salmon Arm and Parksville. Blind Bay, Sicamous, Osoyoos, Nelson, Invermere, Christina Lake, Harrison, Cultus Lake and Tofino are outside it. Check the gov.bc.ca list before you make an offer; it has grown twice since 2018.

How much is the speculation tax on a BC second home?

On a second home assessed at the Shuswap benchmark of $747,500 that sits empty most of the year, about $7,475 a year at the 2026 rate of 1 percent, if the home is in Salmon Arm. The same home in Blind Bay, 25 minutes west, pays nothing, because the South Shuswap is outside the taxable area. Exemptions exist, so confirm your own case with the Province.

Can I rent out a BC cottage or cabin when I am not using it?

Depends where it is. Since 2024, BC limits short-term rentals to a host’s principal residence in most communities over 10,000 people and some neighbouring ones, including Salmon Arm, Lake Country, Osoyoos, Penticton, Vernon, Nelson and Parksville. Regional district electoral areas such as the South Shuswap, resort places such as Sun Peaks and Tofino, and named exemptions such as Sicamous, Peachland, Kelowna, Invermere and Harrison Hot Springs are outside that rule. Local bylaws still apply everywhere: the Columbia Shuswap Regional District runs a temporary-use-permit system for South Shuswap rentals, and Sicamous wants a business licence and limits rentals to certain zones.

Which BC lake is the warmest for swimming?

Osoyoos Lake, which the Town and its tourism office put at about 24 degrees in July and August and call Canada’s warmest freshwater lake. Windermere Lake at Invermere reaches about 25 by community monitoring, and Christina Lake is often called the warmest tree-lined lake in BC, with readings quoted between 22 and 26. Shuswap Lake runs cooler, around 19 in the readings we could find, and Harrison Lake is glacier-fed and rarely passes 20. All approximate; no official BC program publishes a summer average for any of them.

Is Shuswap Lake warm enough to swim in?

Yes, from about July. The readings we found put the summer surface around 19 degrees, cooler than Osoyoos or Windermere, warmer than Harrison. It is a big, deep lake, so it warms later and holds its temperature into September.

How far is the Shuswap from Calgary and Vancouver?

Salmon Arm Tourism puts it at roughly five hours from Calgary and four and a half from Vancouver on the Trans-Canada. Trip planners put Blind Bay at about 537 kilometres and six hours twenty from Calgary, and 436 kilometres and four hours forty from Vancouver. It is the only lake region on this list within a long-weekend drive of both cities, with no ferry.

Has Blind Bay been evacuated for wildfire?

No evacuation order has covered Blind Bay between 2023 and 2026. Blind Bay was put on an evacuation alert in August 2023, along with Balmoral, Notch Hill and Carlin, because of the Lower East Adams Lake fire across the water; an alert means be ready, not leave. The big 2023 Bush Creek East order applied to North Shuswap communities on the far shore. In the same window, orders did cover Kelowna, Lake Country, Peachland, Summerland, Osoyoos and Christina Lake. Fire risk is real on every Interior lake. We would rather you see the record than a brochure.

Is it cheaper to buy a cabin in BC or build a lake house on a lot?

Most people start by searching for cabins for sale in BC. On the Shuswap, most of what comes up is an older building on a resale lot at a resale price. A serviced lake-view lot at The Highlands at Blind Bay starts at $197,000, and our cost-to-build guide puts real BC Interior construction ranges against that so you can compare the two honestly. A new build can also qualify for BC’s Newly Built Home Exemption from property transfer tax within the value limits, which a resale cabin cannot.

Sources

Where the numbers come from

Province of BC, speculation and vacancy tax taxable areas (December 2025) and tax rates (July 2026); short-term rental principal residence requirement (September 2026); Newly Built Home Exemption. Columbia Shuswap Regional District board reports on short-term rentals (2024, 2025); District of Sicamous short-term rental page.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Climate Normals (1981 to 2010 and 1991 to 2020) for the Salmon Arm, Kelowna, Penticton, Osoyoos, Vernon Coldstream Ranch, South Slocan and Parksville stations, directly or as cited by the secondary sources in our research notes.
Association of Interior REALTORS, Greater Vancouver REALTORS, Vancouver Island Real Estate Board and Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board, MLS Home Price Index releases, July to September 2026.
Drive times: Salmon Arm Tourism, Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism, Travel Columbia Valley, Tourism Kelowna, Tourism Harrison, Village of Cultus Lake, Parksville Qualicum Beach Tourism; trip-planner estimates where no tourism body publishes one. Lake temperatures: Town of Osoyoos, Destination Osoyoos, Lake Windermere Ambassadors, christinalake.ca, Tourism Harrison.
Wildfire: EmergencyInfoBC event pages, regional district notices and news reports, 2023 to 2026.

Tax areas, rental rules and benchmark prices all change. Confirm the tax and rental status of any specific property with the Province and the local government before you buy. This page is general information, not tax or legal advice.