When Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall takes the stage at the opening of the Saskatchewan Real Estate Forum next month he will be addressing perhaps the most confident real estate crowd in the country.
"The last five years in Regina have been better than the preceding 15 years," said Kevin Reese, president of Karin Developments Ltd. who will join a Forum panel on land development.
Like many real estate veterans in Saskatchewan's capital, Reese is not surprised at the action in the city, where building permits have set annual records for 10 of the last 11 years and property values have soared, "I always felt Regina was underperforming its potential," he said,
That is not the case today.
An acre of zoned and shovel-ready residential land in the city now sells for from $700,000 to $900,000 an acre. When the city put serviced industrial lots on the market this year, prices started at $430,000 per acre City building permits hit a new record of $773 million last year, up a staggering $220 million from a year earlier.
And a telling stat: of the 6,132 permits issued in the past two years, only four have been for new government projects.
Downtown, the first high-rise tower built in a lifetime reflects what some are calling the tightest office leasing market in the country. And, perhaps most important, the city has reversed its in-migration numbers. "Regina is attracting workers from across Canada and around the world," said Mayor Michael Fougere, noting that many people are coming back to a city they left for greener pastures years ago.
Population growth in Saskatchewan hit 6.7 per cent for the cumulative five years to 2012, the largest growth spurt since Statistics Canada began keeping such information in 1954.
