Finding rental accommodations in the foothills is becoming a tough task.

Blair Gordon with Century 21 Foothills says a lot of people with two homes held on to them and rented one out waiting for the market to change and now it has.

"We find folks that have a property and they live in one and rent another one out and with the market the way it was they would hang on to the property until the market changed and and of course now it has and they tend to give their tenants notice that they're going to sell and then the tenants that have been there for several years perhaps, they have to find alternate housing and there just isn't a lot of options out there," Gordon says.

According to the Calgary Real Estate Board, home sales in the first quarter of this year are up 26 per cent in Okotoks and up 41 per cent in High River over last year.

That's driving up prices.

"There's always the idea that things keep going up but maybe they're going to taper off with higher interest rates and people figure that they would cash in now so $534,000 in Okotoks (the CREB benchmark price in March) and less than that in High River and the further south you go it's less than that but it's certainly up 13 to 15 per cent in a lot of areas."

According to CREB the benchmark price in High River in the first quarter was $395,733, over seven per cent higher than the previous quarter and 11 per cent higher than last year’s levels.