Saskatoon real estate week in review: January 11-15 2010
Saskatoon home sales continued to move at a slower than expected pace this week as real estate agents reported firm sales on just forty single-family homes and condominiums. Forty sales marks a notable increase from last week when just twenty-five homes sold, but it leaves us down on a year-over-year basis for the second consecutive week following a long string of weekly increases. During the same week last year Saskatoon real estate agents reported forty-eight sales for the same period.
New listings, on the other hand, picked up a bit of steam and increased to eighty-seven properties, up from seventy-five last week, but still down compared to the same week last year when ninety-three Saskatoon homes were offered for sale on the multiple listing service.
With new listings more than doubling our sales volume active listings pushed higher again to reach 695 units, up from 665 last week, and well above the year end low of 619 properties. Year-over-year, total active residential listings remain sharply lower than the 1191 units which were available at this time last year.
On a week-over week basis, the inventory of single-family homes remained steady at 388, while condo inventory pushed higher from 235 units to 259. The remaining gains to the inventory were mostly seen in duplexes and semi-detached homes.
The average selling price of a Saskatoon home moved lower for the third consecutive week, falling roughly nine thousand dollars from last week to $249,861. The six-week average saw similar movement in the same downward direction to finish the week at $283,509, about thirteen thousand dollars higher than it was for the same period last year. The four-week median tumbled the hardest falling seventeen thousand dollars on a week-over-week basis to just $252,850, lower than the same week in 2009 by a little better than twelve thousand dollars.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
The average underbid gained about six hundred dollars compared to last week but still fell short of the ten thousand dollar mark at $9,628. Lower list and sale prices saw the average discount rise to 3.7%, up from 3.1% last week.
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.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Saskatoon Real Estate
8 comments so far. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:31 AM
Gotta say, that’s some ugly start-of-year trends on the graphs, guys. Christmas week (and week 1 of January) are traditionally doldrum times, but to have prices continue to drop in week two is interesting… not unprecedented (2008: 270k wk1, 250k wk2) but interesting. And to have listings make their first significant rise already (rather than waiting a couple of months as has been evident in years past) adds to the trepidation. Way too early to tell yet, of course, but the next couple of weeks in January will be interesting to watch; will the (very) short-term trend be continued/confirmed, or was it just one of those blips that happens all the time… and the end of the month will see a bunch of $750k sales to throw everything back into the top end again?
Of a more direct note… I really don’t like the new front-page format. One of the things that makes this blog live is the comments from the other people who come here. With the new changes, however, the ‘number of comments’ is no longer shown on anything but the first news item, leaving one to wonder if there are any new comments… or any comments at all. I come to the blog almost daily (still) and like to keep up on the last four or five stories to see what other people have to say, and I can remember how many comments were on each story so I know if there’s something new to see… but now I have to click on all four or five stories to find that information. It reduces my desire to look at anything but the most recent story (which, granted, may have been an intended effect?) but in doing so it also reduces my attachment to the site. Just a thought for Norm when he comes back from holiday.
To be fair, I actually like the layout… but I really miss the ‘# of comments’ tag. Anyone else who has been here long-term (or even those who just got here) what do you think of the new front-page format, and am I alone in wanting that feature back?
January 18th, 2010 at 6:12 PM
Bookrat,
I completely agree with you regarding the new format. It would be nice to see the number of comments on the main page.
January 18th, 2010 at 8:15 PM
Bookrat nailed it, the comments were handy.
January 18th, 2010 at 8:28 PM
Hey guys,
Thanks for the feedback re: the new format.
Don’t forget, we’re re-vamping yet again relatively soon, so there are things that we’ll definitely keep in mind… and to be honest, I completely agree. The number of comments IS important…
Thanks for the feedback,
And keep reading
Pam
January 18th, 2010 at 10:14 PM
I concur.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:01 AM
Yes “we” all concur
January 20th, 2010 at 5:02 PM
Hey, great “Saskatoon Scenes” slideshow (somebody’s got a kick ass camera!).
You really need to get some campus shots on there though – U of S campus is (mostly) gorgeous!
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:32 PM
Hey guys,
Thanks for the feedback on the visibility of comment numbers. I completely agree. I set up the front page differently because of Google’s changing criteria on how it’s ranking sites. “Load time” is now an important factor and having five full posts up with all of the graphics we use was causing our page to load too slowly. I tried to find a setting on how to display those comment numbers but there doesn’t seem to be one. That said, I know it can be dealt with through some special programming and I will make sure that it gets addressed when the new site goes live in the next couple of weeks. Thanks again.
guy_in_regina,
I also appreciate the feedback on the photo slide show, and you are certainly right about the fact that I should have more stuff right on campus. A few years ago, I set out to get photos of every Saskatoon neighbourhood and that has been an incredibly large task which is nearly complete. Now that this project is nearly wrapped up I plan to spend more time having some fun with my camera and I’m hoping to include lots more general Saskatoon stuff including the UofS campus, some of our heritage building and other special Saskatoon locations.
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