Joel DyckReal Broker SK Ltd.
Saskatoon · From the topic map

Is Saskatoon's office-to-residential conversion boom actually in trouble?

There is no office-to-residential conversion boom in Saskatoon to be in trouble in the first place. That story belongs to much larger downtowns with far more vacant office towers, and Saskatoon's own office-to-housing activity has been limited to a handful of buildings rather than a citywide trend.

CMHC's own research on office-to-residential conversions points to why the trend concentrates in a few big cities: older office towers with deep floor plates, shared mechanical systems and structural columns are expensive to convert to livable units, and that math is the same whether the building sits in a large downtown or a small one.

In Saskatoon specifically, the handful of conversion or adaptive reuse projects that have happened involve institutional or aging commercial buildings, not a wave of downtown office towers standing empty. Whether that changes depends far more on the vacancy rate of Saskatoon's specific office stock than on what is happening in cities many times its size.

For a homeowner or seller, the more relevant number is what the Saskatchewan REALTORS Association reports locally, and the benchmark price there sits at $444,700, not whatever a downtown office market elsewhere is doing. Get your hand-reviewed valuation from Joel Dyck.

Get your hand-reviewed valuation from Joel Dyck.

Still have a question?

Ask Joel directly. No form, no obligation, and a real answer even when the answer is that now is not the time to sell.