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Saskatoon real estate week in review: July 26-31 2010

Saskatoon real estate agents saw a reasonably decent sales week as fifty-one detached single-family homes and thirty-one condominiums changed hands for a total volume of eighty-five units across the two housing types. Sales slipped by just three units from the previous week, and by six when compared to the same week last year.

Listing activity cooled significantly and closed below one hundred units for the second time in July. You have to look back to February to find another week during which new listings were this low and you won’t find another week this year in which sales came so close to matching the listing numbers. Total new listings declined twenty-two units from last week to eighty-eight, three fewer than were listed during the same period in 2009.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

Total active listing began to show some signs of taking a direction as the total number of residential properties displaying an active status slid by twenty-four units this week to finish at 1345, the lowest level since the middle of May, but still more than nine percent above levels recorded at this time last year. As July closes, another forty-three listings are due to expire from the Saskatoon MLS® so it’s realistic to expect that total actives will move lower and may even break the 1300 mark by the close of next week.

As of this morning, there are 803 single-family homes and 468 condominiums available on the multiple listing service®. Last year at this time there were 741 and 393 respectively, so houses are about ten percent more plentiful while condo inventory has climbed nearly twenty percent year-over-year.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

Cancelled and withdrawn listings increased roughly ten percent over last week to thirty-four units. As usual, about half of those returned for another go brandishing a new MLS® number. An additional seventy-four Saskatoon homes sellers adjusted their asking price. Roughly seventy-five percent of those reductions were on properties priced above this week’s median of $270,000. The upper end market remains a challenge for sellers looking to move a property as buyers are faced with an abundance of choice and practically no pressure to move quickly.

Speaking of lots of choice, it won’t come as a big surprise that high-end condos continue to lead in terms of total months of supply. The owner of the Rumley Distinctive Lofts made an aggressive move this week, significantly reducing prices on the nine unsold units in the building. The price on four of the nine fell by ninety thousand dollars. One came down by one hundred thousand dollars. A collective drop of nearly $650,000 is like a “buy eight, get one free deal” but you’ll still need to produce more than a half million dollars ($569,900) to crack the entry level of this unique and interesting project.

After a few weeks of softening prices all three measures that we track moved higher. The average selling price of a Saskatoon home was $290,455, up about eleven thousand dollars from last week and about the same as it was a year ago. The six-week average price moved higher to $291,426 to record a gain of just over a thousand dollars when compared with the previous week, up about thirty-five hundred from the same week last year. The four-week median saw the greatest gains, up five thousand dollars on the week, and four thousand dollars on the year, to $280,000.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

As a percentage of sales, overbids were slightly higher than they have been for a while with six of eighty-four properties going above the asking price. An additional six sellers got their full asking price. Seventy-three sales were closed below the list price by an average of $9,848 or an average discount of 3.3% of the asking price.

Click the image for a larger version of the chart.

Highlights from the news this week

Residential resales predicted to climb: Conference Board (local)
Bankruptcies fall again in May
US home prices rise 0.5% in May
Variable may no longer be the best mortgage
CREA cuts home sales forecast

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.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Saskatoon Real Estate