Winnipeg is tough to get stats for because they are a little different than CREA. Winnipeg realtors association is really good at spinning stuff too. Take a look at this page: Wpg Stats In particular the last chart.

If you compare Dec 15 to 14 and 13 they're all over the place. Last year at this time the same year over year Dec price trend would have been >-10% because Dec 13 was somehow a record month. One of the other charts that stood out to me there is that new listings in Dec were down compared to 14 and yet there were more sales compared to 14. Take all this stuff together and it's not as dire as people would have you believe.

In my personal opinion Winnipeg used to be a ridiculously seller friendly market. Even in the fall we were looking at overpriced junk that had minimal effort put into upgrades or even fixing/touch ups before listing. Showings were not prepared for ie dirty places, no staging, no decluttering etc etc. Sellers here expect bidding wars and top dollar, because that's what they had to do to get the house 5-10 years ago. Because they can could. Now we are shifting to a healthier balance between buyers and sellers. Junk sits on the market, good stuff gets looked at.

One thing I found shopping here is that there are some real gem properties that come up infrequently and get snapped up. For instance, we looked at a nice place inside and out, good price and it was sitting on a really great 264' deep lot. Maybe you don't wanna cut that grass, but for us it was a unique feature that put the neighbours at arms length in a city lot and you don't find that every day.

If you and your girlfriend are thinking of buying, you should probably start talking to a realtor now, go look at whats out there in your price range. Just make sure the realtor knows you're committed to buying, but not in a big rush and want a specific place. I also wouldn't be afraid at this point to keep an eye on places 10-15% above your budget, if they're still on the market in 3 months you might get a steal