Saskatoon real estate week in review – August 24-28 2009
Saskatoon real estate sales took a rather significant turn this week, falling to their lowest level since early May with just sixty-five homes sold, down from an exceptionally strong number of one hundred and fourteen the week before. Unit sales still managed to come in a higher than the same week last year when only fifty-three homes changed hands. On a brighter note, the week came to a close with three hundred and sixty firm residential sales reported for August, up from two hundred and fifty-four for August 2008, and well above the five-year August average of three hundred and seventeen Saskatoon homes sold. With just one more reporting day in August, it seems doubtful that we’ll see the same record breaking performance that we saw in July but we will almost certainly come close to our peak sale levels of 397 homes sold in August 2007.
New Saskatoon MLS listings also took a bit of a dip, though not nearly as dramatically as the slide in unit sales. Agents offered ninety-one houses and condos for sale, ten fewer than last week, and down thirty properties when compared to the same week last year.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
Total active residential listings managed to fall slightly finishing the week at 1152, down just thirteen from last week, but well off of last year’s 1676 homes. Single-family home stock remained steady at six hundred and seventy-six while condominium inventory picked up five properties to finish at three hundred and eighty-five. Losses in other categories (duplexes, semis, etc.) brought the marginal overall decline.
In prices, forty-seven price changes were recorded over the course of the week. An additional twenty-two Saskatoon home sellers pulled the old, “I’m out, no, I’m in” trick by canceling an existing listing and bringing the home back on with a new MLS number.
Prices softened slightly by all three measures this week with the overall average sliding just over thirty-five hundred dollars to $278,932. The six-week average slipped less than a thousand dollars, remaining just twenty-three hundred dollars lower than it was for the same week last year. The four-week median price slipped fifty-five hundred dollars to end at $274,500, about five thousand dollars below last year’s number.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
The average underbid on Saskatoon homes that sold for less than the asking price fell again to $8,609, down just about a thousand dollars compared to last week when it was $9,605. That’s a discount of just 2.5%, nearly half of what we were seeing just a few weeks ago.
Seventy seven percent of sellers who took a deal below their asking price managed to close without dropping more than ten thousand dollars.
Overbid sales nearly disappeared with just two buyers offering to pay more than the asking price (one just barely), compared to eleven the week before.
See a Google map displaying the boundaries of Saskatoon real estate “areas” here
Data collection and calculation for our statistical reports
I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions. All of my contact info is here. Please feel free to call or email.
Real estate geeks can follow our daily updates on Twitter @Norm_Fisher.
Our Saskatoon home search tool offers MLS listings represented by all real estate brands, presented with more detail than you’ll find anywhere else. Check it out here.
Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Saskatoon Real Estate
19 comments so far. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
August 30th, 2009 at 10:20 AM
I’m a new contributor, but have been following your blog for the last 2 years, with great interest. Thanks for doing such a wonderful job! I have a question re this weeks stats: when you look at “sales” from your twitter page, the total for this week before Fridays #’s were added in was 63 sales. There is no entry for Friday at the time I am posting this, but I found it hard to believe that there were only 2 sales!! Could the total of 65 possibly be an error?
August 30th, 2009 at 10:25 AM
Norm,
great job as usual. I have been away for awhile.
I was told the amount of lisitngs in Warman are absolutely through the roof relative to the amount of households. So I checked and found 125 listings( MLS and saskhouses) in a town of maybe 6000 people. Yikes. That is 1 house for sale for 50 people that includes every man, woman and child. Saskatoon has about 1500 listings in a pop of just over 210k. That is 1 in about 140. Phoenix at the peak supply had 1 house for sale per 60 people. The average price is down over 50% there. All numbers are ball park.
Just wondering if much is moving there, wife and I had thought about buying there a few years back. Kindy glad we didn’t.
August 30th, 2009 at 10:52 AM
Carla,
Thanks for the kind feedback. Appreciate that you’re reading, and thanks for the comment.
Hmmm. Seems you have caught me sleeping here. Indeed, I see that I forgot to “tweet” Friday’s numbers. Now that you mention it, I remember why. I snuck away from the office at 4:45 on Friday, and at that time there were only six sales posted for the day. I was nearly certain that someone at the board might be working late at inputting sales, so I decided to defer the update until I was sure everything was up to date. Looks like I forgot to return. ):
When all was said and done, there were only six sales reported on Friday.
My “week in review” post covers just condominiums and houses. I chose to go that route originally as most of the people that we work with are home owners, or potential home owners. We’ve never done a lot with investment property so I really just wanted to get the numbers as “pure” as I possibly could by eliminated duplexes, mobile homes, etc. The “Twitter” stream isn’t quite as refined so it includes stats from the entire residential category. In order to make those updates work for me I have to be able to pull them and post them quickly, so I’m afraid that’s the best I can do for now.
George,
Welcome back. We missed ya!
There are 119 active listings in Warman today, but 23 of them are vacant lots with nothing constructed on them, so really, there are 97 homes for sale. Sales total 17 units over the past 30 days giving you just under six months of supply. That’s a fair bit of inventory, especially going into the fall months but it doesn’t seem Phoenixesque. The three-month rolling average for a single family home in Warman is $307,174 today. It was $343,426 for the same 90 day period last year.
August 30th, 2009 at 12:40 PM
Looks like mls is down again. It’s just unacceptable for such a widely used web-site to have such horrible up-time (don’t even get me started on the interface). Norm, you should really push to get your search engine nation-wide and we can just forget about mls then.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:16 PM
Peter,
Lol. Apparently a million bucks doesn’t go very far anymore. You make a good point though. I’m not sure how some of these smaller web companies that provide MLS feeds to agent sites can do so much better for so much less.
Given what you’ve said, here’s the obvious question: Why do you even go there when you can get all of those listings here, quicker, and with so much more info? It seems like you’re looking to cause yourself pain Peter, and that concerns me.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:03 AM
George!
I thought you and others may find this article interesting. It discusses how the most recent Case-Shiller data in the US show that after a 21% diversion (5-year boom and 3-year bust), home prices have reverted to the rate of inflation. It also discusses how both speculation and available land affected markets in different areas over this time period- two things that we may do well to pay attention to.
After a Bumpy Ride, Back at Square One:
http://tinyurl.com/l765e6
August 31st, 2009 at 11:05 AM
Crikey,
thanks,
I am trying to catch up on economic news. Where I was for the last few weeks on holidays there was no computer or cable tv. It was great to really get away from it all. Well, there was running water
I am very surprised at the amount of sales this August. Is it 2007 all over again?
As for some news today
‘Mark it in your calendar – the Canadian recession ended in June’ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/mark-it-in-your-calendar-the-canadian-recession-ended-in-june/article1270472/
I guess we will see.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:41 AM
George,
“Is it 2007 all over again?”
Unit sales over the past 60 days have been pretty much on par with 2007, but the rest of the market looks quite different. Prices are quite flat in spite of declining inventory and strong demand. They’re rising almost everywhere else. Multiple offers are also not the norm like they were in 2007.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:03 AM
Saskatoon is 2nd in best run cities in Canada
http://ca.lifestyle.yahoo.com/family-relationships/articles/archive/rogers-hello/real_life-canada_s_best_and_worst_run_cities
Saskatoon Coyotes?
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1950556
September 1st, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Interesting to see that Saskatoon is ranked near the top for best run cities in Canada. Having been a former City of Saskatoon employee, I have witnessed the inner workings of City Hall bureacracy for many years. Whilst they have deficiencies, it is quite a feather in the cap for Saskatonians in general to boast the services, transit, leisure, and LOW taxes that are the envy of other cities. Our roads may be a mess in the spring, but our extreme weather is a major factor in the pothole issue. As long as property taxes remain among the lowest in Canada, we should be pleased with the abundant services that our city provides for very little cost (relatively speaking). As a side note, by no means am I a bull, but it is also interesting to find this board very much more quiet the last month or so with naysayers and doomsdayers (ala Garth Turner style) concerning the RE market in Saskatoon. While the interest rate offerings of the banks have been generous and future rises could be problematic for many homebuyers, demographics points to a strong desire for homeownership over the next few years. Of course the markets will have some say in the matter. ((re: Saskatoon Coyotes??? LMAO)) No chance in hell! If the NHL chooses Saskatoon for a franchise, Balsillie and his billions would surely put gun to mouth.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:57 PM
Norm,
In that particular case I was looking at houses in Toronto so I don’t think your engine was an option.
My one issue with your search, and perhaps it’s just my own ignorance, is that I can’t get all of the items on the map at one time. I am a map searcher, that’s just how I do it. When I bring up the map though, I have to go through multiple pages to look at all the different properties in a given area, since I can only get 20 on a page at one time.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:37 PM
Hey Peter,
Thanks for that feedback. I appreciate it.
If I’m understanding your issue correctly, this might be helpful.
One issue with map searching that you could encounter on realtor.ca, or on my site, is a placement issue. Correct placement is dependent on correct postal codes, so if there’s an input error a listing may not appear in the correct spot. For instance, I notice farms and acreages often appearing downtown. As you know, there aren’t many farms downtown anymore. Seems to me that the listing agent is putting the seller’s mailing address postal code (their PO Box) in the property’s postal code field causing it to be incorrectly placed.
Anyway, I hope that’s helpful.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:09 AM
Bearish onlookers may be quite now, in part because they were basing there short term predictions on fundementals which is far from the case right now. Nobody will deny that artificial government intervention is whats floating the economy and housing market right now. Of course bulls believe that a stronger economy in the future will raise tax revenue to pay for current borrowing. It is possible though that may not cover the total cost, if it does’nt income taxes and GST may have to be increased and perhaps new or more hidden taxes added, for home owners near the edge add increased interest rates and higher monthly house payments and the bears in the end may be right. Of course over time generally the bulls win as do the bears, only the others get slautered.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:56 PM
Are we still getting our new bridge, or has the Province nixed/temporarily suspended the funding for this project? (just wondering why the infrastructure/project signs for the new bridge on Circle Drive East have the “Province of Saskatchewan” whited out?)
Norm, “The three-month rolling average for a single family home in Warman is $307,174 today. It was $343,426 for the same 90 day period last year.” Would you possible have the same three-month rolling average for a SFH in Saskatoon, as well as the YTD average for a SFH in Saskatoon? (thanks in-advance)
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:34 PM
Jason,
I haven’t heard of any change with respect to the bridge. Hopefully someone else will have some insights.
3-month rolling average for single-family homes to 08/31/08 – $324,750
3-month rolling average for single-family homes to 08/31/09 – $308,487
YTD (2008) average selling price of a single-family home – $320,396
YTD (2009) average selling price of a single-family home – $303,905
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:41 PM
Jason,
I find this interesting. When you narrow the time frame to just August, the SF average is nearly identical between ’08 and ’09 at $306,807 and $306,400 respectively.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 PM
Norm, that is interesting. Somewhat surreal that the near-identical results were achieved with almost twice the sales numbers (so it looks like we’re off approximately 5% from last year). If I could trouble you for one more stat: what was the average selling price of a SFH in 2008 (Jan-Dec)? Thanks.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 PM
“If I could trouble you for one more stat: what was the average selling price of a SFH in 2008 (Jan-Dec)?”
$315,995.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:34 AM
Election would kill home-reno tax credit: Tories
http://www.canada.com/news/Election+would+kill+home+reno+credit+Tories/1956172/story.html
“The Conservatives are warning that a fall election would kill a popular tax credit that allows Canadians to recoup some of the money they spend on home renovations. The Canada Revenue Agency has been administering the program on the assumption the credit has already passed into law. But the credit has technically never been approved by Parliament, because it was not included in the budget implementation bill that passed in early March. A spokesman for the Canada Revenue Agency also confirmed the credit will die if the second budget bill isn’t passed, meaning Canadians won’t be able to claim the credit on their tax returns for 2009.”
No talks with Tories to deflect election: Ignatieff
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/talks+with+Tories+deflect+election+Ignatieff/1955351/story
“Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff on Wednesday ruled out negotiations with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to avert a potential fall election after postponing a Sept. 6-9 trip to China.”