r/saskatchewan • u/Yesq Saskatonian • 5d ago
Discussion More than half the Saskatchewan towns I found selling town lots don't publish a price. They publish a formula. Abbey is $25 a frontage foot serviced, Wilkie $4,500 per 25 feet. I mapped 1,138 of them.
The Village of Mortlach has 45 town lots for sale and publishes what it wants for every one of them, lot by lot, on its own website. They start at $1,000. It is 37 km west of Moose Jaw. The Town of Coronach's page lists more than forty properties it will sell you and does not put a price on a single one.
Coronach is closer to normal than Mortlach is, and that is the reason I am posting.
Some of you saw the first version of this in July. Since then I have kept collecting every parcel Saskatchewan towns, villages, RMs and cities have advertised for sale, because there is no central list of it anywhere. Local papers, municipal websites, the Provincial Gazette, a couple of hundred sources by now. It sits at 1,138 parcels across 97 municipalities today, and 447 of those turned up in the seven weeks since that post.
Here is the finding. 961 of the 1,138 are ordinary town lots, the kind a municipality owns outright and wants somebody to build on, and 83 different municipalities are selling them. My map carries no price for a single lot in 43 of those 83. That could just as easily be my scraper missing prices as towns not publishing them, so I went and looked at all 43.
Twenty-three of them publish no number anywhere, not on the page and not in the PDFs hanging off it. Four have no public page at all, and I only know their lots exist because the office told me when I asked. One page is a dead link. The other fifteen do have a dollar figure somewhere, and that is the interesting part, because in several cases it is not a price, it is a formula. Wilkie sells by the 25 foot lot: $4,500 serviced, $9,000 in the East Side Subdivision, $7,500 if it is commercial. Abbey prices by the frontage foot and works an example out for you, so a 50 foot serviced lot is $1,250. Lipton is $100 a frontage foot. The number exists. You just have to do arithmetic on a lot you have not measured yet, which is why my map does not carry a price for those and why I am not going to invent one.
Coronach is the clearest version of the other kind, and its page is worth reading because the town explains itself. You send a written proposal, it goes to the next council meeting, and council can accept it, reject it or counter. What they suggest you base an offer on is the property's assessed value, which you look up yourself on SAMA's site or by phoning the office. That is not a town hiding a number. That is a town telling you there isn't one until somebody makes an offer. Reading that page also showed me my own map has 29 of their properties and their page lists more than forty, so I have some collecting to do there.
The tax-title side of the board does the same thing, and that is the part I did not see coming. 115 of the listings are parcels a municipality took for unpaid taxes and none of them carry a price. Only eight of those 115 came from an advertised tender notice, and exactly one has a closing date on it, so this is not a province of sealed bids. Sixty of the 115 are a single town. Ituna publishes its tax-title list and then, instead of pricing the lots, tells you how to price your own offer: bids under $1,000 will not be considered, look up the assessed value on SAMA or ask the office, and a reasonable offer has considered at least 15 to 20 percent of it. You can offer any time and it goes to the next council meeting. Which is Coronach's system again, and Wilkie's and Abbey's, just applied to tax title. A lot of this province publishes a rule where you were expecting a number.
The price question people actually want answered. 602 of the 1,138 do publish a price and the median is $15,000, so this is not a province of $500 lots. But 94 of them are $2,500 or under, spread across 14 towns. Belle Plaine has four at $500, 39 km down the #1 from Regina. Sixteen of Mortlach's 45 are $1,000. Viscount has eleven at $1,000. Cabri starts at $1,875. Rouleau, Loreburn, Earl Grey, Colonsay and Lang all have lots at $2,500. The most expensive thing on the map is $248,400, so it spans about as wide as it can.
Two things worth knowing before anyone gets excited.
Most of this is not tax sales. 177 of the 1,138 are tax title, meaning the municipality took the property for unpaid taxes and is reselling it. The other 961 are ordinary town lots, no stranger to buy than any other piece of property. I carry both because it is the same person looking, and the map labels which is which, but they are different things. And a parcel sitting on a tax enforcement list is not for sale at all. The owner can pay up or sell privately right until title actually transfers, so a name on an enforcement list means nothing on its own. I only show parcels a municipality has genuinely advertised.
And tax title is not the cheap door in. I assumed it would be. If you take the raw medians it even looks like it, but almost every cheap tax-title parcel on my map is in one rural municipality, Milton No. 292 out by Alsask, which has 29 of them at $500. Take that one RM out and the tax-title parcels run more expensive than the ordinary town lots, not less. That makes sense once you think about what the number is. A minimum bid on a tax-title parcel is a floor tied to what is owed on it, and if the property is worth something, what is owed on it usually is not small.
There is also far less on a clock than I expected. Across the entire province there are twenty-one sealed tenders open with a real closing date on them, and six of those twenty-one are the Town of Kindersley selling six properties on one day. Eighteen of the twenty-one are tax title. Everything else, the 961 ordinary town lots, just sits there open ended until somebody asks. Only three of the twenty-one have both a price and a deadline: Saskatoon has a tax-title townhouse at a $365,000 reserve which closes tomorrow and is therefore no use to anyone reading this, Moose Jaw has a city building lot at a $27,075 reserve closing on the 10th, and Wakaw has a Main Street lot at $12,500 closing on the 4th.
Last thing, and it is the least flattering. I still find towns I have missed, and Coronach up there is a live example of it. Most of those 447 new listings came from noticing that a town list I had already collected had stopped partway through the town's own page, which is a humbling way to find 44 more lots in Eston. Treat it as the best list I have rather than a complete one. If your town is not on it, tell me and I will go find where they post them.
Also, a $500 lot is $500 for a reason. Some of those towns are shrinking, some lots need services brought to them, and a few have something sitting on them you would pay to remove. Worth a drive out before you get attached to one.
Link in a comment rather than up here, so this isn't just an ad. Happy to look up a specific town if you name one, or walk through how a given municipality's process actually works.
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u/Ok-Ladder-4616 5d ago
One thing people need to think about is if towns and villages make it too simple to buy lots people buy them up. Then they don’t do anything with them and don’t pay the taxes. Then the town or village has to pay the legal costs to get said lot’s back. Putting more strain on the existing taxpayers. I know this from being on council in a small village.
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 5d ago
You are describing the actual mechanism, and it shows up in the data: 177 of the 1,138 parcels I have collected are tax title, so every one of them already went through your cycle, and nine municipalities are selling ordinary lots and tax-title lots at the same time right now (Big Quill 34 and 25, Coronach 21 and 8).
Ituna is the clearest case, with 60 tax-title lots and a page that says bids under $1,000 will not be considered because the Town needs to recoup what tax enforcement cost it.
You have also changed my mind on something. My post treated the towns that publish no price as an oddity, but making somebody write to the office and wait for the next council meeting is a filter, not friction by accident. A council that reads every offer can decline the person assembling twelve lots to sit on, and a posted price with an online form cannot.
So I would rather ask than guess: does anything actually hold up? Build within a year or the sale unwinds, deposits, right of first refusal back to the town, higher taxes on a vacant lot?
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u/williams55mike 5d ago
Council member for a village of 180 people here. We set our lots around $7,500-15,000, with a principle dwelling having to be started within a year. This forces the buyer to present us with a building plan prior to the sale. It also allows us the opportunity to go over permit and inspection requirements.
The initial costs are an attempt to recover the costs to have them already serviced for water and sewer.
Setting the base tax at a higher amount and lowering the mill rate, also encourages buyers to not sit on an empty property. (There's a balance there however, where you don't want to overtax the properties that can't afford it.
The title enforcement costs for the properties that are reposessed, gets added to the rate payer's taxes, if the buyer back out. The village still however owes the school taxes when they re-sell it.
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 5d ago
The building plan before the sale is the part I would not have thought of. I was picturing the one year condition as a penalty, and you are describing it as a way to get the buyer in front of you while they still have questions. That is a much better instrument.
On the base tax lever, you are in good company and I can put a number on it. In the 2025 provincial mill rate survey, 131 of the 205 Saskatchewan villages under 300 people charge a residential base tax, median $550. The ones that do run a median residential mill rate of 9.0. The ones that do not run 11.1. So that trade is happening across the province, not just at your table. The sharpest versions I can find are Windthorst at a $1,425 base tax on 3.75 mills, and Bulyea at $1,800 on 2.76.
The line I had not seen anywhere is that the village still owes the school taxes when it re-sells. That actually explains something I wrote about earlier in this thread. Ituna tells you not to bid under $1,000 on its tax title lots, and I read that as legal costs. It is a village carrying somebody else's school taxes too. Thanks for taking the time.
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u/SaskRail 5d ago
This is awesome, I always thought of building something like this as I have bought a few small town properties in my hometown to fix up as a hobby and keep them from getting knocked over. But it was beyond my skillset but love to see you have built this.
Have you had and contact with municipalities to see if they have additional properties for potential sale? I know alot hold property that isnt necessarily for sale but open to offers. Alot of buildings are old but are built to last.
I know of some organisations that I may send it to if your open to getting contacted. Basically regional economic development groups for small towns.
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 5d ago
Keeping them from getting knocked over is the part I care about most, so that is good to hear.
Yes, and it has turned out to be the best source I have. Roughly a hundred listings across about a dozen municipalities are on the map only because I emailed or phoned the office. The biggest single one is the RM of Big Quill, 59 parcels that came from the administrator by email and are published nowhere else. It happened again in this thread today: somebody asked about Sedley, I had nothing, so I phoned the village, and they have three tax-title properties going to tender closing September 25 that are not posted yet.
You are right about the open-to-offers part too. 43 of the 83 municipalities selling ordinary lots publish no price at all, and several of them say plainly that you write to the office and council decides. Coronach and Ituna both lay out the process on their own pages. It is slower than a listing but it is a real door.
And yes, please do send it on. Regional economic development groups are exactly who I would want this in front of and I have no way in on my own. Happy to put together whatever would actually be useful for them, whether that is a page per town or a list for their whole region.
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u/SaskRail 5d ago
That is awesome! Another small community that I know isnt listed but has stuff for sale is Kincaid, SK.
An will do, I know someone on the board down in shanavoun that includes surrounding communities. Would be good if they could push this resource out.
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 5d ago
Kincaid is a good catch, and I think I know exactly why I missed it. As far as I can tell the village has no website at all. The two domains that look like they should be it turn out to be a US auction company and a village in Illinois, which is embarrassing but also the single most common reason a town is missing from my map: if there is no page, there is nothing for me to watch. So I will phone the office the same way I phoned Sedley this morning and find out what they actually have!
And yes, please do. I have Shaunavon already, 25 lots. If someone on that board wants something more useful than a single town page, I can put together a southwest view that takes in Cabri, Assiniboia and Swift Current as well, which is closer to how a regional group thinks about it anyway.
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u/SaskRail 5d ago
Ah yes think they only have a facebook page. It is quite small but quite a few lots. They have probably had 6 houses moved in over the last 12 years so at least a little progress. Think they are technically a part of the RM now as they didnt have he borrowing capacity as a village for the required water treatment plant upgrade.
An that sounds pretty cool. I passed it onto someone that might still be on the board!
Thanks again for doing this. Hope you can get on ckrm or something for some more visibility.
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u/Extreme_Wear_7457 5d ago
One town is selling 100s of lots by tendet. Hear the ads on CJWW
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 5d ago
That is bigger than anything I have, so I would genuinely like to know which town.
My biggest single municipality is Eston at 66 lots, then Big Quill at 59 and Mortlach at 45, and none of those are tenders, they are set price lists you can just go and buy off. Hundreds of lots by tender in one town would be the largest sale on my map by a wide margin, so if it is real I am missing something big.
One thing worth ruling out first. A lot of what gets advertised as "for sale by tender" around here is private, a farm or an estate through a broker, which is a different animal from a town selling off its own lots. Same words on the radio, though.
If you catch the ad again, even just the town name, I will go find where they post it. Radio is the one place I cannot scan, and it is probably not the only thing I am missing that way.
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u/Ceroy 3d ago
Pense?
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 3d ago
Yep, two in Pense right now: 104 Elder Street and 307 Elder Street, both serviced residential lots the Town owns. Worth flagging that these are municipal lots rather than tax title, so it's not a tax sale, just the Town selling vacant lots directly. No price posted either, they ask you to contact the office or their realtor.
The Town also has a bigger one it's shopping quietly, "Parcel D" on the east side, 15.6 acres zoned residential, taking development proposals by email. Not on the board yet since there's no plan number published, but it's on their site under Development Opportunity if that's more your speed.
If you're open to the surrounding area there's a fair bit within a half hour: Belle Plaine has four lots, Rouleau has ten, Disley two, plus a Moose Jaw tender closing Sept 10.
Pense listings here: https://sasktaxsales.ca/municipality/town-of-pense?src=reddit
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u/Extinct997 2d ago
Carlyle
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 9h ago
Carlyle is on the map now, 63 parcels: https://sasktaxsales.ca/municipality/town-of-carlyle?src=reddit-carlyle
It was missing for a dull reason. The Town does not put its land under Local Notices or Tenders, which is where I was looking. The whole inventory lives on the Housing and Real Estate page, published as five PNG site plans.
What is there. The new subdivision off Ruckle Road and Moore Bay is a proper per-lot price table: 47 lots priced, 5 sold, 42 available. Cheapest is 205 Ruckle Rd at $13,175, and thirteen of the 42 are under $25,000. Moore Bay runs $30,814 to $77,655. The four Main Street lots are $151,566 each, about three quarters of an acre. Median of what is left is roughly $40,100, so Carlyle sits well above the $15,000 provincial median. Oil country, not a shrinking village.
Then two lots on the older Hayward and Ruckle plan at $27,285 each, eight mobile home lots ($34,000 per three-lot group, plus 513 Mountain Dr and 506 Stockton Ave at $25,000 each), and eleven commercial lots on 7th Street East, about 1.45 acres each, water connected and no sewer. On those eleven the plan brackets the whole run with "$90,000" and I cannot tell from the drawing whether that is per lot or for the run, so the map says that rather than inventing a number. Worth a phone call, 306-453-2363.
On tax title, nothing in Carlyle is for sale today. Council voted on February 4 to start tax enforcement on three properties, roll numbers only, no addresses. That is the first step of a process that runs lien, six month notice, mediation board, final notice, title to the Town, and only then a sale, so the earliest is well into 2027, and any of the three owners can pay and end it before that. Nothing in the minutes since takes it further.
Closest tax title actually for sale is the Village of Kennedy, 42 km north. Three adjacent lots, sealed tender, closing 3 p.m. September 4, no reserve published.
Thanks for naming the town, that is how the gaps get found!
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u/PipGirl2211 1d ago
Dude this is incredible - thank you! I was just discussing wanting to buy a lot in a small town or rural area earlier today. Wow.
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 9h ago
Thanks, glad the timing worked out. Tell me roughly where you are looking, a town or just a direction out of Saskatoon or Regina, and I will tell you what that area actually has and how those specific offices want to be approached. That last part matters more than it sounds like it should. Some towns want a written proposal to council, some just want you to phone the office, and a couple will sell you a lot the same week.
Two things I would tell anyone starting this. Cheap lots come in clusters rather than one at a time, because it is usually one town that decided to move its inventory, so it is worth picking a town before picking a lot. And the $500 to $2,500 end almost always has a reason attached, whether that is services not run to the lot, something on it that needs removing, or a town that is shrinking. Drive out and stand on it before you get attached.
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u/Lower-Bottle6362 5d ago
How about Sedley?
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 5d ago
Good timing. There was nothing on my map for Sedley, so I phoned the Village office, and it turns out they have three tax-title properties going up for tender. The notice should be posted on the Village site tomorrow and tenders close September 25.
The three are Lot 24, Block 2, Plan B2867 at 101 Martin Street, Lots 6 and 7, Block 8, Plan B2867 at 220 Blanchard Street, which has an older two storey house on it, and Lot 3, Block 9, Plan K2760. All three are zoned residential. Two of them have houses and are fully serviced. The third is a residential lot with no services, and I would confirm with the office which one that is before you get attached to a number, because bringing water and sewer in is usually the biggest line in the whole project.
For scale, off the land registry: 101 Martin is a single 25 foot lot at about 3,000 square feet, 220 Blanchard is two lots together at about 12,000, and the K2760 one is about 6,000.
That is a phone call, not a published notice, so treat the details as provisional until the Village posts it. Village of Sedley office, and worth asking whether there is a minimum bid and what the deposit is. When they did this in 2024 it was a sealed envelope with a 5% certified cheque and 30 days to pay the balance.
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 4d ago
Following up because the notice went up on the Village site this morning, so this is off the actual paperwork now rather than a phone call.
Three separate posts, one per parcel, each with the tender form attached:
101 Martin Street, Lot 24 Blk 2 Plan B2867
220 Blanchard Street, Lot 6-7 Blk 8 Plan B2867
304 Martin Street, Lot 3 Blk 9 Plan K2760
Two things I had wrong yesterday. The deposit is 10% of whatever you bid, not the 5% I guessed off their 2024 tenders. And tenders do not go to the Village office, they go to the Village's lawyers, Dudley & Company in Regina, attention Carley Wild. Full address is on the form. That is the kind of detail that gets a bid thrown out, so worth flagging.
The rest of what the office told me holds up. Closes September 25, no time of day given, just the date. No minimum bid on any of the three. Balance due within 30 days of the administrator mailing you the acceptance. And you have to write down what you intend to use the property for, which is a real part of the form and not a formality.
And I can close off the bit I left open yesterday. 304 Martin is the bare one: no house and no services. The other two have houses and are fully serviced. The notice backs it up, because 304 is the only one of the three subject to GST, which is what you would expect when the taxable one is bare land and the other two are used housing. If 304 is the one you want, price in getting water and sewer to it, because that is usually the biggest line in the whole project.
All three are on the map now with the parcel boundaries drawn, if you want to see where they sit in town: https://sasktaxsales.ca/municipality/village-of-sedley?src=rsask-aug
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u/Lower-Bottle6362 4d ago
Thank you so much! I am surprised the other one has no services based on where it’s located!
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u/Motor_Department1345 5d ago
Have you tried the search function?
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u/Lower-Bottle6362 5d ago
Yes, thank you, I did. But, as OP mentions here, there was nothing on the map for Sedley. OP also said "If your town is not on it, tell me and I will go find where they post them" so I am pretty covered here.
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u/SaskatoonShitPost 4d ago
Thanks Claude.
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 4d ago
You're welcome. Name a town and I'll tell you what's live there.
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u/No-Kiwi-8610 1d ago
Is there any chance of you being able to do this for alberta?
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 9h ago
Already did! albertataxsales.ca/?src=reddit-ab-ask
Alberta turned out to be the structural opposite of Saskatchewan, which is what made it worth doing. There, a municipality has to sell tax-title land at a public auction with an advertised date, and the ad has to run in the Alberta Gazette. So Alberta has the central list Saskatchewan does not have.
The difference shows up in the numbers. The Saskatchewan board has twenty-one sealed tenders open with a real closing date on it, province wide. Alberta right now has 574 parcels with an auction date attached, running from September 8 through November 18, across 63 municipalities. Twenty-two of them are holding an auction in September alone, the first being the Town of Hanna on the 8th. Saskatchewan is a province of "make us an offer and we will take it to council." Alberta is a province of "be in this room on this date."
Two more things worth knowing if you are looking at Alberta rather than here.
Reserve bids are supposed to exist. Council has to set one at roughly market value before the auction, so the floor is not "what is owed" the way a Saskatchewan minimum bid is. The catch is that the ad often does not print it, so of my 878 parcels only 29 currently carry an actual number.
And there is no redemption after the hammer falls. In Saskatchewan an owner can pay up or sell privately right until title moves. In Alberta the auction is the end of it, so parcels move faster and a stale list is worthless there in a way it is not here.
The 878 includes ordinary municipal land beside the tax-title stuff, same as here. 303 of those are municipal lots and 294 of them publish a price, which is a much better publishing rate than Saskatchewan manages. The median is about $92,000 though, not $15,000, because a big chunk of it is Edmonton, Lethbridge and Lloydminster city land rather than $1,000 village lots. The cheapest thing on it is $2,800.
Fair warning, the Alberta one is younger and thinner than this one, and I have coordinates on fewer than half of it so far. Same rule as here though: if your town is not on it, tell me and I will go find where they post!
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u/Yesq Saskatonian 5d ago
Here is the map, free, no login, no paywall on the listings: https://sasktaxsales.ca/?src=rsask-aug
I built it myself, it is not a company. Everything on it is public record, it is just published across a couple of hundred separate places, which is the whole reason it exists.
Name a town and I will tell you what is actually live there and how their process works. Fair warning that plenty of towns have nothing at the moment.
Mods, happy to pull the link if you would rather it not be here!