Moosomin close to reaching target under $30,000 housing incentive
May 7, 2025, 11:58 am
Ryan Kiedrowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Last year was a big one for growth in Moosomin with an estimated $24 million worth of construction happening in the town and RM in 2024. This was thanks in part to how the town used $1 million from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, offering $30,000 for the first unit built plus an additional $8,000 for each extra door in multi-unit housing.
The result? The plan paid off. Soon, inquiries were coming in to the Town of Moosomin from all over the map.
“It has slowed down a little bit over the winter, just because people aren’t really thinking about construction, but it has started to ramp back up,” said Moosomin’s EDO, Casey McCormac. “I’ve had some more inquiries about it as the weather gets nicer and people start to think about building homes.”
The target for the entire program is 43 units, and McCormac says Moosomin is only eight units away from that number. Since the incentive was announced last year, there have been 24 multi-unit/other, eight multi-unit missing middle and three single family homes with building permits submitted for a grand total of 35 units.
“One more apartment building and we would hit it just because we have to hit 43 units, but that’s actually broken down into six multi-unit missing middle, which those Elite Suites on Broadway are considered because there’s no shared spaces,” she explained. “Normally, they count multi-unit/other as anything over three storeys, but for small towns like Moosomin, they consider stuff with shared spaces that because we don’t even have an apartment building more than four storeys.”
Developer pleased
The 24 multi-unit/other category came to Moosomin thanks to Keller Developments building a pair of 12-suite, three-storey complexes in Moosomin—a first for the crew as they had not ventured outside of the Brandon area before.
“It was definitely a positive factor when we got down to making our final decision,” explained Evan Keller, President of Keller Developments. “We had eyes on Moosomin for a long time, and the community had honestly been knocking on our door. We had a number of different landholders stop in and pitch their properties to us over the last three or four years, so we’d always been looking at it, and we always wanted to diversify out of Brandon.”
The positivity in Moosomin was another factor in Keller’s decision to venture across the border.
“Moosomin is our first real estate project outside of the city of Brandon that we maintain ownership in,” he said. “We love the area, the community, the industry that’s going on there. It just really seems like it’s a happy place.
I think Saskatchewan itself just has a really upbeat, positive business sense to it. It just feels like it’s easy to do business there, and very welcoming.
So that’s all been factors in why we’ve wanted to come that direction. Our construction company has set up office there, Westman Premier Homes. We’re hoping to do more work out that way, we hope it just continues to build and grow, and if there’s more opportunity down the road in the rental market, we’ll definitely be open to looking at it.”
As for how it feels to have all 24 units of Prairie Sky Heights completed, Keller is enthused.
“We feel pretty good,” he said, adding that they’re around two-thirds leased already. “That’s a comforting number. It was a little slower lease up than we’re used to, just based on Brandon, but honestly, I think it was actually really good, we just weren’t used to it. Something about being a smaller town, it just takes a little bit longer to make people realize that they’re available and open and then ready to be occupied. It’s been really positive, and good quality tenants, too. That’s been something we’ve really noticed, we’ve got a number of professionals leasing from us.”
From working with the town, open houses, and interacting with community members that have helped Keller Developments, the overall experience has been incredibly positive.
Keeping the ball rolling
Now the town is looking at how to keep the momentum for building in Moosomin sustained into the future.
“Originally, when we had started, I did our annual report here in February, and we needed to hit three by then, and we were already at 35 or 36 units, so we were well ahead of what we needed to hit,” McCormac explained.
Previously, everyone was under the impression that money through the HAF program was simply a one-time thing, but given the election results, McCormac wouldn’t be surprised if a subsequent ask would be fruitful. Brainstorming sessions on how to keep the construction excitement flowing have happened informally, but no solid plans have emerged yet.
“We have talked about it, I have talked about it with council,” McCormac said.
“I don’t know exactly where we’re going to go with that, but I guess now that the Liberals got back in, there might be more Housing Accelerator Fund money for us to access. If we could get even more funding from the program, we would definitely keep the same $30,000 incentive in place. If there’s no money available, I think that we definitely would look at doing something—probably not a $30,000 incentive, but some sort of tax incentive or something like that, that council can control.”
Given the experience his company has had in Moosomin, Keller wouldn’t be opposed to another build.
“For us, we want to get this building full and kind of stabilized, if you will, everything running smoothly, and then once we’ve got that wrapped up, we’ll definitely start looking around,” he said. “We definitely learned through the process that there’s some demand for different types of units, I would say more one- and two-bedroom, just to fit different demographics. You got single people or senior couples that are looking for maybe a bit smaller space—not quite the bigger three-bedroom units that we built. We could definitely be looking at something like that down the road, where we have a bit of a different unit style fit the market.”
So far, 2025 has seen a lot of grand openings with Prairie Sky Heights, plus Elite Suites opening their doors, and the new Borderland Co-op grocery store opening its doors a few months ago as well.
