MELFORT — With 2020 in the books, members of the Melfort city council were happy to report an overall increase in building permits during this past year.
Considering the average for the province was a 19.5 per cent decrease in construction permits over the year, Brent Lutz, Melfort’s director of development and planning,said the numbers say a lot about Melfort residents investing in their homes during the pandemic.
“People were spending more time at home and decided that they would really like to have a new home and it would be comfortable. Everybody spent money on home improvements as part of the pandemic, as well. Home has certainly become more important to us as we've been locked in it.”
Especially in an agricultural community like Melfort, a strong farming economy can drive construction in the following year, Lutz said, and what was clearly evident in 2020 can mean a strong 2021, as well. That doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges ahead.
“The only challenge we see in front of us right now is that the cost of inputs for construction have gone up considerably over the course of 2020. And we don't know what's going to happen between now and spring.”
For 2020, Saskatchewan had $1.2 billion in building permits over 2020, which was a drop from 2019’s $1.5 billion. Nationally, Saskatchewan is ranked eighth among the rest of the provinces with a 2.8 per cent drop in the national average. Ontario, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador were the only provinces that saw a rise in permit dollars.
