Sask. real estate is looking good

Contributed

The Saskatchewan real estate market continues to be strong, outperforming the market last year. Across the province, year-over-year sales were up almost 52% from last September (and up over 18.5% year-to-date), new listings were up 10% year-over-year (but down just over 7% year-todate), and the median sale price was up over 2% (up 0.4% year-todate). Inventories were also down in 18 of the 19 markets that the SRA tracks. Although the province continued to see an uptick in COVID cases in September, this hasn’t deterred people from buying and selling real estate. “While it’s been suggested that the market would suffer due to COVID,” said SRA CEO Jason Yochim, “this really hasn’t happened in Saskatchewan.” Despite a smaller number of new and active listings year-todate, other numbers are generally better compared with last year.

“The fact that sales and prices are up while inventories are down suggests the market has more than recovered and is doing better than last year—despite the pandemic,” said Yochim. Median sales prices were up in 12 of the 19 markets that the SRA tracks (with Melfort and Weyburn seeing the strongest declines while Swift Current and Yorkton saw the greatest increases), while the number of sales were up (or flat) in 17 of 19 markets. Seen relatively strong performance throughout the summer this year, and this strength has carried over into September.