Neepawa planning forum for homeownership

The Town of Neepawa is organizing an unusual program to educate residents about homeownership.

The municipality aims to host a second public forum this spring, following its first in November, to help residents explore pathways to homeownership, Marilyn Crewe, economic development officer for the town, told the Sun in a recent interview. The town is working with residents to accommodate population growth and support a large amount of newcomers.

“It is unusual, but I believe that education is key to making good decisions,” Crewe said. “Especially for our newcomers. Neepawa is like 50 per cent newcomer-Canadian, and they’ve never bought a house, they’ve never walked through a Canadian process for buying a home, and so that drives me to make sure that there’s as much education out there as possible.

The forum was created with newcomers in mind, however the education is general good practice for everybody and should probably be more common in other communities, Crewe said.

“It’s not one of those things that they teach us in high school, right?” she said. “They don’t teach us how to buy a house. So I thought that it would be an opportunity for Neepawa to host this ‘pathway to owning your own home’ workshop to bring experts in to talk about various aspects of owning your own home at an early stage.”

The program is coming back after a lot of positive feedback from the initial event last year.

The second public forum will hopefully bring back speakers to talk about financial literacy, local government, real estate and law, she said. Crewe also hopes to add a second day where additional homeownership-related professionals are available for questions and discussions.

The plan is to time the next education forum so that it comes with news about the town’s subdivision plan in the west end, where 197 residential lots are expected to become available in the next year, Crewe said.

Neepawa is working to cover a gap in housing. Crewe found that Neepawa needed 460 housing units by 2028 to keep up with pent-up demand.

The town at its first forum briefed residents on what to expect for the new subdivision that has been introduced to accommodate this growth. CAO Colleen Synchyshyn urged residents at the time to start putting ideas together.

“You roughly have a little better than a year,” Synchyshyn said in November. “You need to actually take a look at it now, and when we say that they are available for sale, you’ve done all that homework; you can come in, we can sell you a lot, and you can get out and start your home.”

Synchyshyn said that as the new subdivision takes shape, community members interested in buying property should start to plan savings and consult about their options for mortgages so that they are ready to take action when the residential lots become available.

The cost of the residential lots in the first subdivision is not yet known because the town is still discovering how much the project will cost to prepare the residential area, Synchyshyn said at the forum.

Synchyshyn provided information about population growth, including that Neepawa was recorded as the third-fastest growing community in Manitoba according to the 2021 Census; and that the local government estimated the town’s population to be at 6,250, up from 5,685 in 2021.

Synchyshyn said the town purchased 320 acres of land in 2024 and began outlining a long-term vision to meet housing needs of the growing population. The first phase speaks for a 58-acre parcel of that land.

The town is working on this project currently to deal with infrastructure and servicing requirements. According to Synchyshyn, the town was hoping to install a lift station this winter to service the sewage needs in the area.

The municipality has received a lot of calls inquiring about the properties and about when they will come online, Crewe said. But the town does not know about the final date, as it is currently working with the province to get approvals.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com