During 2008 I dutifully reported to you each housing start up to November when I was showing some 21 new houses in the town of Tisdale under construction or completed. At that point I quit telling you about them because, quite honestly I thought you were getting tired of yet another picture story of a house being built in Tisdale. I was also getting bored with the repetition. Before the end of the year thrity-one new houses had been started and only one of them is still in the basement state all the others are completed or being completed and a surprising number have families living in t hem. I think two of those new houses are still on the market for sale.

I am not sure what to do this year, I am going to need some guidance from you to know if you want me to keep track of this year's construction.

The first basements were dug last year in March and one of the first houses started early in the year, April, is the one seen in the picture above. Mr. Pote' house was ready for him to move in by mid August.

This afternoon the lot between Mr. Pote' s new house and his old house which is now three years old, Chupa Excavation cleared the snow away from the lot which is already serviced for water and sewer. It was originally going to be the site for Mr. Pote' s new house but it was discovered that SaskEnergy and inadvertently left a gas line running across the property. It was not until late summer that the line was removed so that a new house could be put on the lot.

The big Chupa Track hoe was brought over to begin work this afternoon but it was decided that it was a little late in the day to start the project and they took the machine back to keep it warm in the shop and ready to start the dig tomorrow.

In the mean time let me know if you want to keep track of the various building projects. A number of new lots have already been sold in preparation for a new construction year and even though the contractors are still finishing up on last year's projects they will soon all be ready to begin new projects within the next couple of months.

There is no question that the demand for new housing is still quite strong in Tisdale as the housing market sees late model houses come on the market and are not available very long. There are still quite a few houses in the community on the market and as mentioned early two of the brand new houses are available but the demand is still strong and the construction this year is expected to be similar to what we saw in 2007.