How hot is the Kitchener-Waterloo real estate market right now? Just look at Susan Lankowski’s Wednesday night.

Returning home from a week-long vacation, the Kitchener resident wasn’t able to go to bed until she’d talked to real estate agents interested in the home she’d put on the market the day she left.

“We drove into the parking lot, and there were three real estate agents waiting to present offers for me – at 10 p.m,” she said in an interview.

“I’m running in the door with my suitcase, saying hi to all the real estate agents. I was not expecting that at all.”

Lankowski says her Country Hills property received nine offers in total, all “well above” asking price, after eight days on the market.

Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, Norm Graham just went through a very similar experience after putting his home of 35 years on the market.

He says prospective buyers toured his house on a regular basis for the 10 days it was listed. On some days, as many as six interested parties went through.

He ended up selling his house for his asking price, but says he could have got more if he’d been willing to hold out a little bit longer.

Their experiences are borne out by data released Thursday by the Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors, which shows that although the local housing market may not be quite at the peak of activity it saw earlier this year, it remains very hot.

The association recorded 588 home sales in July in Kitchener, Waterloo, Wellesley, Wilmot and Woolwich – the highest total for any July since 2008.

A low level of residential listings remains the main factor behind high activity levels and ever-increasing sale prices. According to KWAR, a prospective buyer has nearly 60 per cent fewer listings to sift through than they did at the same time last year.

Real estate agent Michelle Wobst says she’s never seen the local market as busy as it’s been in the last few months – with multiple offers becoming the norm, rather than cropping up only under perfect conditions.

“The market has been pretty crazy all year,” she said in an interview.

“Even houses on busy streets are selling.”

Wobst says the hot market means interested buyers need to be aggressive when it comes to submitting offers, including giving up on conditions that might be more easily acceptable in cooler markets.

With reporting by Marc Venema