The population and number of households in Weyburn has increased by 1 to 2 percent in the past five years. However, the number of dwellings in the city has only increased by 0.6 percent. This has the potential of creating a bottleneck in housing where there are not enough houses for the city's projected population.
Executive director with Weyburn Regional Economic Development, Monica Osborn says available housing is at an all-time low, calling it a sellers' market.
“If people are interested in putting their houses on the market for sale, there is a pretty good chance that the house is going to be sold pretty much immediately. Especially those quality homes from that $250,000 to the $400,000 range, those seem to be going pretty fast.”
Some of the drive behind Weyburn's population increase is due to immigrants moving in, alongside people from other provinces according to Osborn. She says Weyburn is overall an affordable place to call home.
“People out in BC and Ontario, they're finding that it's really hard to afford a home or even just rent an apartment. So, when they come here, they can sell their home where they've been living and have that quality of life that people are really looking for.”
“That is always great for economic development in our community, when people move in here and they are able to have that extra spending money that they can spend in our community.”
Osborn says the Weyburn Chamber of Commerce is working with the City of Weyburn on their recently implemented incentive programs benefitting those wanting to build a home in the city.
“We are working with the city to just make sure that all the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted, in regard to that incentive, just to make sure that everything goes forward in the direction that we are hoping that it can go. We are in conversation with the city to make sure that incentive is beneficial for developers and contractors.”
One factor that Osborn contributes to the lack of new developments is the supply chain. Building materials and products are sometimes limited alongside being costly due to the supply chain. Another factor is high interest rates; however, she says they are slowly decreasing.
“Interest rates have been coming down slowly from where they had been. The Bank of Canada had released something a little while ago. There might be another projected interest rate cost reduction in September that's going to be announced. So, for people that are looking to re-mortgage their homes that is definitely a beneficial factor to them in making those decisions, as well as the building process going forward.”
The correlation between population growth and economic growth means partnerships on many different fronts to ensure as the population grows, the city grows with it.
“Obviously, if people aren't able to move here, it does affect our growth in the long term. So we do need to make sure that building does start happening again in our community. And how that looks is going to be a conversation that the Chamber of Economic Development, the City, [and] the developers and builders around our community.”