When inflation started to skyrocket and the Bank of Canada began to relentlessly raise interest rates, it’s fair to say lots of folks in many parts of Canada freaked out.

Not without reason. We had not seen rate increases like that — seven of them! — in something like forever. And sure enough, those jumping numbers deflated housing (and other) real estate markets across the country, especially in the big cities.

And then we have Saskatoon.

Sure, interest rates have taken some of the oomph out of the mad buying brought on by COVID. Yes, they have seriously affected the new home market; builders won’t put up homes on spec, and rightly so.

Banks backed away from pre-approved mortgages, unable to keep up with the federal bank’s increases, so many new home buyers (and therefore builders) were out of luck. That’s the downside of the local market.

But the tale on the existing side is quite different. Please bear with me while I fling some stats around.

Last year in the city proper, 4,587 homes sold, down 15 percent from 2021. The drop was unsurprising.

However, that number was a solid 500 properties up from the 10-year average of 4,082. And that’s in a market with lower listings than the norm, as well. After all, if the home isn’t on the market, you can’t buy it.

Real estate agents listed 7,264 homes last year, down 12 percent from the previous year and 14 percent down from the 10-year average.

It was the end-of-year inventory number that really amazed me. We had 1,115 homes in inventory, down a whopping 31 percent from the 10-year average of 1,607.

The benchmark price of $368,873 was still holding pretty steady by the end of the year, up one percent.

This is not a market in trouble like, say, Toronto — at least not yet — unless of course you’re trying to buy a detached family home. The Saskatchewan Realtors® Association is seriously concerned about the dearth of this type of property, and with little building taking place, it will take a while before there is sufficient supply.

That dearth may be exacerbated by the economic momentum we’re seeing in some quarters, which is illustrated quite dramatically by industrial real estate numbers.

While there was a slight increase in industrial vacancies in the final quarter of 2022, it remained incredibly low at 2.65 percent, the real estate sales and leasing firm ICR Commercial reported in January. The Marquis industrial area vacancy rate hit an all-time low of 1.36 percent.

This incredible tightness may ease this year, again partly due to rising interest rates; but there is significant stock outdated for modern manufacturing use, which will more than likely keep the industrial market highly competitive.

Meanwhile, the high vacancy rate in downtown office space has also started to ease. Last quarter, it had dropped to just over 18 percent, which isn’t great; but it’s significantly better than the 24-plus percent seen earlier in the year.

Some of that improvement can be attributed to BHP. The massive company’s building of the Jansen potash mine will see considerable progress this year, leading to BHP leasing three floors of the River Quarry building — the former police station.

There are other things going on, like the ramping up of a rare earth elements processing facility in Saskatoon. This is a big enough deal that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dropped by to check it out on Jan. 16 (not without controversy around who was and was not invited to the event, but that’s another column.)

The Vital Metals plant is the first of its kind in Canada. The rare earths are mined in the Northwest Territories and shipped here to refine into a carbonate, which is then sent on to Norway. Rare earths are important in the manufacture of technology products.

All of which is a long way of saying people are going to work in these offices and at these plants, and not all of them are necessarily already living here. There are also other newcomers to this city. They need houses. We don’t have enough of them.

Tough problem, but one that other jurisdictions drowning in empty expensive houses might kill for.

I’m not getting into the retail side. Retail faces a whole different batch of issues than residential, industrial and office real estate, just starting with the massive swing to shopping online — further exacerbated by the COVID lockdown. I look at that market and my brain just goes “eeeeeee run away.”

Pushing that aside and acknowledging the issues, I’d say we’re still going into 2023 looking pretty good, all things considered. Please, New Year, do not disappoint me and ruin my crystal-ball-reading reputation.

(Joke. My crystal ball got all murky a long time ago.)

• Joanne Paulson