Meadow Lake real estate market experiences significant change

“It should give some confidence to the consumer as there is just one set of rules that everybody functions under. For example, you could have come out of Regina dealing with a realtor down there with a different set of rules the way business is done there and all of a sudden you come up here to buy property and all of a sudden, rules are different. They’re not majorly different but they had their intricacies with the way they were handled,” he said.

Lorenz indicated open house rules have slightly changed to now account for the number of people through a home. Property disclosure is still not mandatory but encouraged among realtors and their clients.

There is also a small cost savings for realtors as a single membership is required rather than a subscription to multiple boards for access to information.

Lorenz said the Meadow Lake market has taken a significant downswing in listings and sale prices.

“I think the market is going to be somewhat flat until we see what the economy does in the spring. There’s been some encouragement of some early interest. Usually this time of year, things are somewhat quiet. Offices both in Meadow Lake and the Battlefords, people are looking at property and wanting to write some offers, so we feel there is some pent-up interest of wanting to do something,” he said.

Lorenz went on to say banks alleviating the two-point stress factor and federal election promises are factors to unfold that may bring first-time buyers back into the market. The local economy in the Battlefords has the spinoff of oil and Meadow Lake has not experienced that yet.

Meadow Lake real estate could be directly affected by the NAFTA deal on lumber tariffs going south of the border. Those are all issues to unfold in 2020 that could change the way markets reacted in 2018 and 2019.

Dec. 2019 saw four sales for the month though 108 sales for the entire year. The previous year saw 198 sales in total which indicates 90 less sales in 2019 from 2018.

“Not only have the number comes down in sales but the values on the properties come down also. The average property sale was $184,000 in 2018 and $162,000 was the average property sale in 2019. That’s a drop of $22,000 in an average sale property.

In a depressed market, there aren’t too many buyers out [there] and the buyers that are out, are buying at less money. The values of property had to come way down,” he said.

The brokerage indicated $36 million in sales in 2018 with a difference of $17 million in 2019 for the region.

“The banking changes that have been made affected us in 2018. The two-point stress factor has really hurt the bottom-end buyer. If you’re going to borrow at 3.2 per cent, you have to qualify at 5.2 per cent. When the bottom end buyer disappeared, sellers aren’t selling either. People entering the market know they can buy cheaper because things aren’t selling. There isn’t a big demand for property right now,” Lorenz said.

The real estate market has experienced a steady downturn in the way of $15-20000 in property value decreases each year. Lorenz contributes the downturn to the mortgage stress test.

“The biggest reason the stress factor happened was to slow down the market in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. It’s impacted the entire country which had no purpose or reason to and it’s slowed down the housing market of the entire country,” he said.

Lorenz reiterated his optimism for improvements to the real estate market in the coming year. As part of their campaign promise, the federal government agreed to address the first-time buyer stress test in 2020.

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nicole.reis@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @nicolereis7722

by Nicole Reis

Meadow Lake real estate market experiences significant change

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