(sorry that’s all i could think of)

You may be right. I just picked up the phone and called my former business partner who moved to Calgary last August. He says that there is a ton of entry level product around. Price drops may be worse than the media is reporting. He was telling me that his friends bought a house which they moved into one year ago. Another house, which is almost identical and located just across the street just sold for $130,000 less than his friends paid. Ouch!

Bye Jesse.

Lol! You’re sarcometre is finely tuned.

I think that all of the items I mentioned are statistically sound and I don’t believe that StatsCan is “spinning.” If government agencies and economists had anything to gain from painting a false picture I’m sure they would be doing it elsewhere, where there’s a large population base.

I’m not saying that Saskatchewan is the land of milk and honey. Rather, there is plenty of opportunity here and I think that you may be kidding yourself with a “grass is greener elsewhere” kind of thinking.

When it comes to housing, I do appreciate how difficult it is to get into the market right now, but it ain’t easy in Calgary either, even with a 10-15% pay raise (except maybe you can actually find homes that you can make offers on).

I sense some sarcasm lol.

What constitutes a boom though? It’s like saying a large company did great this past year…now if you work for the company, did you nessessarily do better than the previous year? In more cases when a company does better, it’s top earners see better wages, while the smaller joes in the company see nothing.

Everyone says there are jobs jobs jobs, but when you look for actual ‘career jobs’the number is quite tiny. If you want to work min wage jobs, there are PLENTY. The 958 businesses, I would love to see a list to see what they included, how many paid minimum wage or close, how many were ‘reopenings’, how many were chains (like opening 5 more coffee and donut shops when we have 5 of them in the city already) and so on.

I wonder how much of the ‘boom data’ includes normal growth, since there will be a percentage that is a typical growth factor in jobs, retail spending etc.

I would love to go through all the stats with a fine tooth comb to come up with a true sense of what this ‘boom’ has produced. If it ended up that this was truly a boom, I would be happy with my findings, I just want truths, not spin. I take everything with a grain of salt so you’ll have to forgive me if i don’t eat up the numbers before looking into them like most people seem to do.

I looked into population since 1979 on stats canada once for saskatchewan and found out if we still had the amount of people that left the province since then, we’d have over 2 million people here (not counting deaths).

Good for you for not letting all of the significant economic indicators fool you.

Just because employment, incomes, immigration, retail spending, commodity prices, residential building permits, non-residential building permits and natural resources are “better than they ever have been” in Saskatchewan doesn’t mean that the economy is actually booming here. Don’t be fooled just because 958 new businesses opened in Saskatoon last year and every single sector of the economy grew.

Adster,

Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. Take comfort in the fact that housing works with a “trickle up” effect. This is simply a correction that will ultimately make homes more affordable for those at the lower end of the market. No real estate market can thrive selling only homes that are twice the “average”for the area.

It’s not too puzzling why Calgary average and median prices still go up despite the 40% increase in inventory coupled with 40% decrease in sales. The number of million dollar plus sales still keeps growing which is skewing the numbers because the number of lower end sales is slowing dramatically.

It’s like the slow down hasn’t affected the rich (top 5% wage earners) in Calgary at all, so they can still easily afford the high end homes because they’re wage has gone up 65% over the last 2 years just like house prices.

Adster

The province would have to undergo a HUGE correction to change my opinion on moving away out of this province for greener pastures, better incomes, and more opportunities. (not to mention relatively more affordable housing)

It’s good news yes, but it’s got a long ways to go before the trend gets pulled down further…Seems that it took no time for the province to say oh it’s a boom a boom!!! BOOOOOOOM!!! couple that with people not actually looking into ‘the boom’ in detail and finding out that there really was no boom…It will take a LOT longer time frame for things to get back to reality as any cynic usually is labeled as a crazy person until the number of ‘crazy people’ catch up to the number of the ‘boom sayers’.

I think it’s great RBC did their study. More places need to realistically look at actual facts, not ‘catch phrase’ marketing to give us all what’s real.

We were certainly up there for income growth in 2007 and things appear to be looking good for 2008. SREDA is predicting 8% growth this year.

Warren,

Nice to hear from you again.

I find it amazing that Calgary prices could still be “up” even with the ballooning inventory levels.

I did not know that Saskatchewan was marketing there again. The government is looking to add 80 nurses here over the next four years so I’m not surprised that the target is health care workers.

Still trying to follow your blog, keep up the good work. Two bits of information I thought readers might be interested in.

1. The RE market in Calgary is looking very interesting right now. I think the point that has been made about Calgary (and Alberta in general) being a canary in the coal mine for Saskatchewan is very accurate.

So far this year, listings are at an all time high; sales are down about 40%, and prices are up slightly. I’m always afraid that when I describe the situation, my bias comes through – so check out Bob Truman’s site or findcalgary.ca to see for yourself.

2. I don’t know if anyone knows about this or not, but the Saskatchewan government has their billboards up again in Calgary (“It’ll always be home” and “Own your own home” – same ones as last fall). It’s lower key than previously, but I hadn’t heard anything about this. The ads seem to be marketed at health care workers.

This is good news! My optimism is returning. Met with another builder today who is offering to build for less than the one we were dealing with. Our original builder went from $150/sq ft to $190/sq ft in the course of 5 months, so needless to say we weren’t impressed.

I’m convinced by summer Saskatoon’s market will cool and the bullish attitudes I hear from almost everyone in this city will have quietened. If the sale numbers begin to slump but inventory keeps rising it would sure put a huge smile on my face. If this past week’s stats are anything like the week before I’ll be satisfied.

I’ve noticed that there are huge numbers of entry level positions available in Saskatoon, but I’m not so sure how many professional positions are actually out there? This will also determine how drastically things are going to slow. Albertan’s aren’t going to move away from their sweet paying jobs when their houses are losing value and Saskatoon’s wages aren’t increasing much.

You’re right. No big surprises here. With the new increases we’ve seen over Q1, I suspect that affordability has seen further deterioration.

Yes, it is tricky telling someone what their house is worth. I prefer to focus on methods which can be used to help them find out. If you can wind the listing up, pull 20-30 buyers through the home, and look at 6-10 offers you can usually feel that the market has made its determination.

As Larry suggests, that’s only for today though.

Larry,

GMA. I like that. There’s also the SWAG method of property evaluation (statistical wild-ass guess).

For hints and a guiding light on how to deal with this Saskatoon crisis, find any material on Vancouver housing for the last 5 years.

Evaluations become a maybe this or a maybe that depending if it’s Wednesday. Multiple offers with 5 to 10 or more players become derigeur shooting the Wednesday asking price 25K to 100K higher.

People will soon ask you (they probably already are) what should WE offer? This is where YOU hand them a bag to put over their head with complimentary dice as you ask them “Well how much do you want it?”

The reason for the question being, it’s Thursday. Thursdays are always surpise days and you just never know what Thursday brings. Vancouver Thursdays tells you a good guess is higher prices.

But Norm, before they roll the dice, they must sign a disclaimer stating that YOU have advised them that it is surprise Thursday. So, if the market drops on Saturday or Monday or maybe Tuesday or maybe any day, they acknowledge and understand they will lose their shorts. Of course, if they sell at the right time – which we know could be any day of the week – they are heros.

Free GMA – GOOFY Market Analysis available anytime. Pre-sale condos – we gotz dah advice on that too. But only on Sundays after lunch. <:)

Heather, Jesse, you should find some comfort in this (maybe?). Things I see to watch?

-Immigration – both ex sk patriats and other nationalities

-Actual capital investment into developing jobs (private companies are going to have to buck up if they want to stabilize the economy)

-Income levels in SK, AB, BC

2008 will be interesting to say the least.