NEIGHBOURHOOD · KELOWNA

Crawford Estates: the bench above the Mission where the lot is the whole story

Crawford Estates is the flat bench east of Gordon Drive and above DeHart Road, a small neighbourhood of half-acre to one-acre lots that almost never come up for sale. It has Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park at the end of the street, a waterfall in the canyon behind it, and a fire history that anyone buying on this hillside should hear before the view does its work. Here’s what the sales record says, and what I’d tell you at the table.

Crawford Estates by the numbers

Every figure below is a median of single family detached sales recorded on the Interior REALTORS® MLS®, as of September 2026, covering sales through August. Read this one as a range, not a target: this neighbourhood sells a couple of dozen homes in a good year, and a single lot can move the median.

Two things in that table matter more than the rest.

The premium is the land. A Crawford Estates detached home sells about 48% above the Central Okanagan median so far this year, at $1,400,000, and has gone up about 83% in ten years. That premium is not the houses, which range from 1970s ranchers to 2000s builds. It is the half-acre to one-acre lots, flat and usable, a few minutes above the Mission, which nothing else in the city offers at that distance.

Read the year, not the month. Thirteen sales through August this year, the same number as in all of 2018, and thirty in 2020. With counts like that a single estate or a single teardown moves the median by a hundred thousand dollars, which is why 2022 shows $1,495,000 and 2025 shows $1,370,000 without anything about the neighbourhood having changed. The ten-year line is the trend. Any one year is a range wearing a number.

Where it is and what it is

Locals draw it the same way: DeHart Road and Stewart Road on the north and west, the Bellevue Creek canyon on the south-east, and the working acreages of South East Kelowna beyond. Crawford Road, Stewart Road East and West, Mission Ridge Road, Westridge, Parkridge and Canyon Park Crescent are the streets. It sits inside what realtors call the Upper Mission and is nothing like the rest of it: no village centre, no townhome rows, no tiered lots on a slope. Just big, usable, mostly flat parcels with homes from the 1970s through the 2000s and a handful of newer builds on the edges.

The park is the neighbour. Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park, about 7,700 hectares, has an access at the end of Stewart Road East that BC Parks itself notes is unusual for being this close to a city, and it serves the lower trails the mountain bikers use. The Crawford trail network next to the neighbourhood was private land until March 2019, when an agreement folded it into the park. Canyon Falls Park holds Crawford Falls, a two-kilometre round trip into the Bellevue Creek canyon to a pair of waterfalls. Canyon Falls Middle School opened in 2019, the first middle school in the Mission, and BC Transit’s on-demand service for the Crawford zone started on 28 April 2024, which is how you get to the Mission Rec exchange without a car.

What the homes are like

Custom homes on land. Half-acre to one-acre lots, most of them flatter than anything else on the Mission bench, which is the reason people buy here and the reason they stay. The houses range from 1970s ranchers to 2000s builds, and what sells a property is the parcel: the privacy, the room for a shop or a pool, the trees, the trail out the back.

Three things to check on any of them. First, servicing: this is a rural-residential pattern, and whether a specific lot is on City sewer and which water utility serves it is a per-property question, not a neighbourhood fact. Second, the Province’s small-scale multi-unit rules exempt lots of an acre or more and lots not on both municipal water and sewer, so the infill rights that changed the city’s core mostly don’t apply here, which is part of why the land holds. Third, the hillside: any lot with a slope over 20% needs a development permit and a sealed geotechnical report to build or expand, and the Mission bench is glacial soils on a slope.

Then the fire. On 16 August 2003 the Okanagan Mountain Park fire started from a lightning strike across the lake and burned about 25,000 hectares; when it ran into the city on the night of 22 August it destroyed roughly 240 homes, and 68 of them were in Crawford Estates, nearly a third of the city’s losses in one small neighbourhood. The homes were rebuilt and the scars on the hill are still visible. This is a wildland interface neighbourhood, FireSmart standing matters to insurers here more than almost anywhere in Kelowna, and I raise it on every showing.

Buying here: what I’d tell you at the table

Selling here: what actually works

Sell the parcel first. Aerial photography of the lot, the trees and the park edge does more here than any interior shot. A buyer for Crawford Estates has been waiting for a piece of land, and the listing has to show them one.

Have the fire file ready. Rebuild history, FireSmart work, insurance renewals. A buyer who has to discover 2003 on their own discounts for the surprise; one who gets the file up front prices the house.

Price against the parcel, not the neighbour’s house. With a couple of dozen sales a year, the comparables are thin and the lots aren’t alike. The right comparable is the one with the same usable land, not the one with the same square footage.

Don’t rush a rare listing. Homes here come up so seldom that the buyer pool is real and patient. A clean launch with the file ready draws the right offer; a rushed one draws the lowball.

Questions people ask about Crawford Estates

Is Crawford Estates a good place to live?

If what you want is land, privacy, a provincial park at the end of the street and a fifteen-minute drive to Pandosy, there’s nowhere else in Kelowna that offers the combination. If you want to walk to a coffee shop, no. It’s a car neighbourhood, with an on-demand bus since 2024, and it sits on a hillside that burned in 2003.

What happened in Crawford Estates in the 2003 fire?

The Okanagan Mountain Park fire, started by lightning on 16 August 2003, crossed into the city on 22 August and destroyed roughly 240 homes. Sixty-eight of them were in Crawford Estates. The neighbourhood was rebuilt, the hillside above it still shows the burn, and the fire is the reason FireSmart work and insurance terms are a live conversation on every purchase here.

Why do so few homes sell in Crawford Estates?

Because owners stay. The lots are the largest usable parcels this close to the city, and people who buy them tend to hold for decades. A couple of dozen sales a year across a few hundred homes means a buyer with a specific want may wait a season for the right one to appear.

What schools serve Crawford Estates?

Dorothea Walker Elementary since the 2022 catchment change, Canyon Falls Middle School, which opened in 2019 as the Mission’s first middle school, and Okanagan Mission Secondary, which has run a French immersion path since 2022. Confirm the exact address on the district’s map; this catchment has moved once already.

What is my Crawford Estates home worth?

The land more than the house. A flat acre with trees and privacy carries a premium that a renovation can’t create and a dated kitchen can’t erase. With so few sales a year the median is a weak guide, so I price against the parcels that actually compare. Send me the address and I’ll tell you what I’d list it at and why.

Which REALTOR® should I call about Crawford Estates?

I’m Braden Koop, a REALTOR® with RE/MAX Kelowna (licence 191956). I work the Mission from both sides: this site carries the detached data and what I’d tell you at the table, and my neighbourhood site, uppermissionkelowna.ca, carries the listings and the lifestyle depth. On a parcel here I’ll bring the fire file, the servicing check and the slope question before we talk about the house. Call or text 250-801-8725, or send the address through the contact page.

Go deeper

Every area I work is on the neighbourhoods map, with these figures side by side.

Market figures on this page are medians of single family detached sales recorded on the Interior REALTORS® MLS® for the Crawford Estates sub-area and the Central Okanagan, pulled September 2026 and covering January through August 2026 for the current year. They describe the market, not any one home, and this area sells a few dozen homes a year at most, so read a single year’s figure as a range. Fire, park and school facts are drawn from BC Parks, the Province, the school district and public reporting and were current as of September 2026. Braden Koop Personal Real Estate Corporation operates under RE/MAX Kelowna. Each RE/MAX office is independently owned and operated.