Housing in the Energy City continues its trend of low availability and high demand.
Real estate is booming in Estevan, and prices may continue to climb through 2013, as availability is an issue for the most desired houses.
"We're short of inventory in every price range condos. Price ranges from $150,000 to $500,000, we could use," said Diane Jocelyn, of Estevan Real Estate Professionals.
The houses that were sitting on the market at the end of 2012 are now starting to sell, she added.
Lynn Chipley, owner of Century 21 Border Real Estate, said once again the housing market has become stronger.
"I've said, I think every year, that every year the market gets stronger, and we seem to sell more properties. Certainly that was the case in 2012," said Chipley.
Since 2009, she said they have nearly doubled unit sales and dollar volume.
"That's fairly huge over a four-year period," she added, noting that those numbers include outlying areas like Lampman, Midale and Oxbow.
She said each community has shown an increase and they are doing more business outside of Estevan than they have ever done as places like Oxbow and Carnduff demonstrate a greater need for rentals.
"That's our biggest pressure, rentals. What it's meant is things like the multi-family that have come into the city, whether they are the apartment-style condos or the townhouse-style condos. As soon as those are available, if they're in that $200,000 to $300,000 (range), they get snapped up pretty fast."
Those are pretty typical average prices for starter condominiums, said Chipley, but it's not an average price. Looking at houses in Estevan, a more typical range is between $300,000 and $400,000 for single family and more than $400,000 for a brand new, single-family house.
Last year was a steadily busy one, said Jocelyn.
"There were a lot of sales (last year). Our inventory for the first half of the year maintained a steady balance and then increased near the end of the year," said Jocelyn. "Toward the end of the year, it became more of a balanced market between buyers and sellers. Now we're finding the trend to be picking up and very busy again. Maybe prices will be on the increase."
She is anticipating the climb in prices, calling the city a "brisk" market, with low availability and continued high demand.
"There will be the odd bidding war," she added.
With Trimount Development's Dominion Heights project in the northwest part of the city as well as other development, Chipley and Jocelyn agree that those new residential spaces are having an impact on the city.
"We'll probably see some levelling in the market, I would think, with all the new homes coming on," said Chipley. "That's probably not a bad thing."
"It's helping the market already," said Jocelyn, adding, "more so as summer and fall arrive. We're seeing it impact the market already."
"They are going to have trouble keeping up to demand," said Chipley, regarding Trimount's construction this year.
The development at Dominion Heights will begin in the spring, with work heading through the summer and fall on both single-family residential as well as multi-family dwellings.
"There's certainly pent up demand for that. Lot sales have gone over well there. We're probably at 85 per cent sold of the lots that they've put out," said Chipley. "There's demand in every price range because people buy in price ranges based on what they can afford, and people generally buy the most they can afford. Everybody's at different earning levels and different stages of their life when they come to us."
The range from $200,000 to $300,000, she said, will probably always be the most in demand.
Jocelyn said the availability for two- and three-bedroom houses is almost nonexistent.
"Is that normal? The last few years it has been fairly normal," she said.
While the demand for units in apartments and condos is growing, Chipley said there are still lots of single-family houses being sold. Last year, she said, there were 310 homes sold. Of those 144 were single-family and 165 were multi-family. That includes two of the new Petterson Point buildings, which make up 70 of the 165 multi-family units.
"That is starting to be a shift," said Chipley, who noted it used to be about a 70-30 split in favour of single-family units.
The multi-family is growing throughout the Energy City and things are getting much closer to a 50-50 split.
"I think it's happening everywhere. It's just the cost of building. If you want to bring product online, starter homes, they are going to be a smaller footprint home, like some of the smaller homes that were built on narrower lots at Hillside. Those are probably the most affordable new houses that came on the market in the last year."
People still want single-family homes, but Chipley said the lots will get smaller, making the overall footprint smaller.
"It's an interesting start to the year," said Chipley.
