Thanks for the kind feedback. I appreciate your visits and the comment.

I don’t doubt what you’re saying. While affordability has improved a fair bit over the past year, clearly Saskatoon continues to be one of Canada’s most expensive cities in which to buy a house. Renting isn’t an affordable option for many either. We have much to be thankful for at this particular time but there’s no doubt that affordable housing is an issue here right now and it really has been since the spring of 2007. All that said, it’s nice to finally be back to a period of improvement as opposed to further deterioration.

Thank you again.

I’m from Saskatoon, live out east at the moment, and read your blog regularly. Thank you for providing such valuable information, it is an excellent resource. Actually, it’s so good that I think you could easily build a profitable business by creating a template, branding it, and licensing it to realtors in cities everywhere.

I had a conversation last night that may be of interest.

While walking along the Ottawa River last night a man approached my sister and I to ask for directions to a hotel. A friendly bus driver had told him it was four blocks east, when it was really four blocks west of the bus stop! He kept his humour when we told him this, then asked if we would show him where it really was. As we walked and talked, he said he was in town searching for work. In fact, he had also been out west job-hunting, including a stop in Saskatoon. His report was frustrating to hear, because he said that though jobs were available, to own a quality home in Saskatoon of the size required for his family was unaffordable in relation to his potential income. I didn’t ask about his income requirements, but the houses he was looking at were above $400,000. Even in the current economic climate where jobs are few and far between, he chose to keep looking instead of moving into what he considered a financially imbalanced living/working situation in Saskatoon.

The bright side of the story is that there are jobs available in the prairies, and people are coming in search of them. I just hope those who arrive with skills to contribute will find Saskatoon to be a great place for their families to thrive, financially and otherwise, as well as a great place to simply find work.

I found it interesting that they use the word “repair” when discussing improving affordability. Of course, the implication being that something became broken.

Patience. The full extent of the improvement in affordability in Saskatchewan is not apparent in this study at Q4/08, but it quite literally costs hundreds of dollars less to own a home here than it did a year ago. It’s my understanding that it often takes longer to come down but some good progress has been made.

Bizzaro World strikes again.

(I don’t want Saskatchewan to fail. I just want common-sense and reasonable price increases to return to this province. I’m still waiting…)

; )