Saskatoon real estate week in review: February 1-5 2010
Saskatoon real estate sales numbers continued to bring hope that spring is on its way as agents reported a total of sixty house and condo sales to the local MLS, a drop of just three properties from last week and a gain of eleven compared to the same week last year.
The new listings that were conspicuously absent for last week’s review made a comeback as one hundred and one homes made their way to the market, a welcome addition to what feels like a tight inventory, especially in the price ranges that are at or below the average selling price of a Saskatoon home. New listings were much higher than last week’s number of fifty-eight homes but fell far short of the one hundred and forty-two properties offered for sale during the same period in 2009. Most years, we start to see pretty good upward spike in the number of new listings offered for sale right around this time, so hopefully, supply will increase in the weeks ahead.
This week, the inventory of active residential listings inched just slightly higher over the previous week moving from 734 to 749, to sit at roughly two-thirds of last year’s level, which reached 1,124 by this time. There are currently 411 single-family homes and 290 condominiums for sale.
The cancellation and re-list strategy was back in full swing this week as thirty-three Saskatoon home sellers put the kibosh on their MLS listing and twenty-three quickly resurfaced as a “new listing.” Nineteen sellers adjusted their asking price, all of them moving lower.
The average selling price of a Saskatoon home fell more than $10K on the week to $279,617. The six-week average saw its fifth consecutive weekly decline slipping more than three thousand dollars to $272,658 and reaching its lowest point for the year, roughly nine thousand dollars lower than it was at this time last year. The four-week median inched up a thousand dollars from the previous week to $260,000 and finished forty-five hundred dollars lower then it was for the same period in 2009.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
There was some notable change at the negotiation table as eight home sellers (13 percent) managed to complete a deal at a price greater than their asking price. The average overbid was $2,337. Seven of the eight overbid sales were from areas 1 and 2. The average asking price for these properties was $308,042. Four of the seven properties were town house condos priced at an average of $277,900. An additional three sellers got all they were asking and forty-nine went for less than the asking price by an average of $8,557. The average negotiated discount was just three percent, well below the 3.6% average from the week before.
Highlights from the news this week
Building permits spike in Saskatchewan
Why CIBC sees a double dip in U.S. house prices (report)
The little house that went to market
Six banks urge Ottawa to tighten mortgage rules
A map displaying the boundaries of Saskatoon real estate areas is here.
An overview of data collection and calculation practices for our statistical reports is here.
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
8 comments so far. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:54 PM
So 400 new appartment style dorms now under construction for U of S campus?
I said it a year ago when they were announced, but has to put negative pressure on condo prices, as at $500 per month, reasonably priced, lots of volume to come on line in next year, and makes buying a cheap condo less of a necessity, and decreases rental crunch – which has already softened some what, with slight increase in vacancy.
We all knew condos in Saskatoon are too much, considering they were less than half
February 9th, 2010 at 8:21 PM
Nick, good point on the dorms. Do you have a link to the progress or know when they will open?
February 9th, 2010 at 8:28 PM
Peter,
This story from today’s Star Phoenix says the projected completion date is August 2011.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:33 PM
$35.9M for 115 units; $312,173 per unit seems a tad expensive (even @4 students/unit). Arguably I haven’t seen them, so maybe they’re very nice. What are they planning for parking?
February 10th, 2010 at 6:35 PM
Jason,
Where ya been man?
February 11th, 2010 at 12:22 AM
Norm, well, I spent a week digging out from that ungodly blizzard that befell us! The one year I talk my wife out of buying a snowblower, too… (mother nature has a cruel if not devious sense of humour)
How are things with you? Every time I check in from time-to-time I see continued improvements with the blog! Kudos – keep up the good work!
Actually I’ve been engrossed (or perhaps over-enaged) in the never-ending stream of ‘catastrophes in the making’ with our neighbour to the South. Scary stuff!
I see the BoC has held interest rates, although there was a fairly large caveat with inflation. It’s shaping up to be an interesting year in the housing industry!
February 11th, 2010 at 2:13 PM
The average selling price of a Saskatoon home reached its highest point since Christmas week at $290,133 up from $269,289 last week and falling short of last year’s number by just a few hundred dollars. The six-week average slid by less than one thousand dollars from last week to $275,759, about eighteen hundred dollars higher than it was for the same period in 2009. The four-week median inched higher to $259,000 showing gains of two thousand dollars on a week-over-week basis, but sat six thousand dollars lower than it was at the same time last year.
Umm… I hate to nitpick, Norm, but isn’t that paragraph discussing last week’s numbers?
According to the graphs and charts with the rest of the article, average price this week is off > $10k from last week to $279.6k this week, and the six-week rolling average slid again to ~$271k from the looks of it, continuing a four-week decline to the lowest point so far this young year. This was converging back with the rolling four-week median, however, which finished at over $260k for the first time in a month, indicating that effect of all the high-end sales in December are falling off the back end of the stats.
That’s the sort of thing I was expecting to find when I read the article.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:31 PM
Bookrat,
Thanks. Something is definitely screwed up. The paragraph was written last weekend, but clearly I was looking at the graph from the previous week when I wrote it. What’s even stranger is that I don’t seem to have the most recent weeks graph. I’ll have to follow up on these changes later but thanks again for the heads up.