Next time you’re talking to a new home builder in this province, be kind.
They’ve been fighting a tough market for a couple years now as they try to strike a balance between supply and demand. So far, supply has been winning that tug-of-war and builders are paying the price for it.
A report last week on new home starts – an indicator of how they feel about the market’s prospects down the road – show they continue to fall. Starts of single family units in Regina dropped more than 40-percent so far this year. Saskatoon is closer to 20-percent but it is still noteworthy. Cuts in multi-family starts were even deeper. So it is not a happy situation as it also driving down the amount a builder can charge.
A new StatsCan report on the cost of building a new home showed prices have fallen about three percent in Regina and half that in Saskatoon in the last year. Since land prices have not moved that means builders are taking smaller margins in hopes of enticing buyers with lower sticker prices.
