Statistics Canada released its Gross Domestic Product numbers yesterday which show that the Saskatchewan economy underperformed on expectations and forecasts of RBC Economics, CMHC, and the Conference Board of Canada, all of which estimated higher growth of between 4% and 4.8% for Saskatchewan in 2007.

According to the report, Saskatchewan’s economy grew by 2.8% through 2007, just a smidge higher than the national average of 2.7% and well below the other western provinces, which saw growth ranging from 3.1% to 3.3%.

Doug Elliot of Sasktrends Monitor told the Star Phoenix that Statistics Canada’s numbers are a more accurate reflection of the provincial economy than those of private sector economists.

“I think the Conference Board (of Canada) and all of the bank (economists) have been overstating the strength of Saskatchewan’s economy.

“We’re doing fairly well, but we’re not this powerhouse that everybody seems to think we are.”

Hmmmm?

Read the Star Phoenix coverage here.

Read the StatsCan report 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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

This particular report weighs a number of factors including house prices, incomes, crime rates, employment, weather and lifestyle.

View the results 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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

More than 155,000 families have already lost their homes this year. Approximately 1 in 194 U.S. households have received some sort of foreclosure filing.

Nevada is the hardest hit state with 1 in 54 households received foreclosure filings. Stockton, California tops the list for foreclosures in a U.S. municipality. Approximately 1 in 30 homes have received foreclosure notices.

Read the CNN Money article 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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

Following a few weeks of unseasonably sluggish home sales, the Saskatoon real estate market took an upward bounce this week with 117 condominiums and single-family home sales reported as having firmed up. That compares to just 70 last week, and it even tops the 109 units reported sold for the same week last year. An additional 63 homes are flagged as “conditionally sold” on the Saskatoon MLS system.

New residential listings continued on an upward trend with a total of 220 properties being introduced to the market, including 146 houses and 58 condos. Total active residential listings closed the week at 739 units, up from 668 last week, and significantly higher than the approximately 255 homes that were available at this time last year.

Some cooling occurred in the overbid arena with just 34% of Saskatoon homes sold selling for more than the asking price, down from 41% last week, and dropping sharply from the whopping 73% that we experienced during the same week in April of 2007. The average overbid took a big hit falling 42% from last week and landing below the $10,000 mark for the first time in the last ten weeks.

After three weeks of pushing the $320K mark, average selling prices softened to $288,679, the lowest weekly number we’ve seen since the week of March 10-14. Sales at the upper end of the value range were down in most areas. Also notable is the fact that the average selling price of a Saskatoon home was lower than the average list price for the first time since the week of February 18-22.

It seems to me that all of the indicators are pointing towards a little more balance in the near future, assuming that new listings continue to outpace sales at the current rate. Total unit sales for the month of April will almost certainly show some softening over April 2007. These two factors should result in better conditions for home buyers.

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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

Remax Press Release – Kelowna, BC (April 22, 2008)

“While higher housing values and tight inventory levels have hampered home-buying activity so far this year, longer amortization periods and alternative housing types have offset the impact on most major markets across the country, according to a report released today by RE/MAX.”

“Despite a higher degree of frustration in the marketplace than in previous years, the RE/MAX Affordability Report found that first-time buyers, in particular, remain steadfast in their determination to purchase a home. In fact, entry-level purchasers are adjusting their expectations by sacrificing size, location, and even long-term financial freedom, to overcome challenges such as rising prices and serious supply issues. Innovative financing has become key to homeownership in today’s environment – with longer amortization periods gaining favour in 62 per cent of the major centres surveyed. Low or no down payments were popular with first-time buyers in 38 per cent of markets.”

In Saskatoon, the report indicates “A two-bedroom, 900 square foot bungalow in good condition can be purchased from $200,000 in areas such as Confederation Park, Fairhaven, Meadowgreen, Mayfair and Westmount. The least expensive home sold in the city to date was a 535 square foot bungalow which traded hands for $80,000.”

Remax Saskatoon agent, Ivan Toledo told Star Phoenix Business Editor Murray Lyons that “people looking for affordability are discovering neighbourhoods such as King George and Westmount, where some existing houses are for sale and Toledo is working with two different builders on in-fill projects, building semi-detached, two-storey houses.”

"They will buy a little drug house or whatever on a 50-foot lot, knock it down, subdivide it and put up new construction," Toledo said. "We have the lowest cost new construction in Saskatoon.

"It's basically a Stonebridge (style) house and if Stonebridge is selling for $360,000, we're selling ours at $270,000."

Read to Remax Affordabilty Study 2008 here.

Read the Star Phoenix story 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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

On April 15 when I posted my “Closer Look at the Saskatoon Real Estate Statistics for March, 2008,” I expressed some concern about the accuracy of the numbers and even included a disclaimer warning that there may be some accuracy issues. Indeed, there were. That post has been updated today and I can’t guarantee that it won’t require another update at some future point.

While most of our statistical reports use data based on the date that the sale was reported, our “Closer Look” dissects the sales based on the contract date. We’ve chosen the middle of the following month as our reporting date, but as we explain in our “Data Collection and Calculation” page, there is always a possibility that more sales conducted during that period could be reported late.

My initial report included data based on 306 units which were showing as sold at the time that I published that report. By this weekend, the number had increased to 364 units, a pretty substantial difference, so I thought I should call this edit to your attention. These latest monthly figures are more in line with the weekly sales that we’ve been reporting in the Week in Review. While we are still showing fewer units sales year over year, the difference is actually quite marginal, at least in comparison to what was initially reported.

In reviewing the sales from March 2008, we see a decline in total unit sales of 6%. The number of single-family homes sold dropped 21% while condominium sales increased by 41%. Prices reported in our initial post were nearly identical on the update.

So, I extend my apologies to the bears that frequent this blog for getting you all excited. I’m sorry to have led you to believe that the sky might be falling on the Saskatoon real estate market.

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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

It's time for Canadians to bid the housing boom farewell as data for the first quarter of the year, released Thursday by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), showed a 13 per cent tumble in existing home sales year-to-date.

“Canada's six-year housing market boom is officially over. Aside from a few choice Prairie locales, sales are melting faster than this year's snow pack,” Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., said in a research note.

Double-digit declines in sales activity in “more markets than you can shake a stick at,” suggest the weakness has spread across Canada rather than being centered in any specific market, Mr. Porter said in an interview.

Read the full story 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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

Monday night’s meeting of Saskatoon city council’s executive committee produced nearly five hours of “discussion and heated debate,” on proposed changes to the city’s condo conversion policy according to a report in this morning’s Star Phoenix. The majority of the councilors in attendance ultimately voted to put the brakes on the trend toward rapid and unrestricted conversions of apartment buildings to condos.

Assuming that the executive committee’s recommendations are approved by city council at its April 21 meeting, certificates for conversions will not be granted when vacancy rates fall below 1.5%, as measured in Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Rental Market Outlook reports. The most recent report pegged Saskatoon’s apartment vacancy rate at just 0.6%. If approved, the new policy will not be applied to the applications for 14 buildings that are already in the queue for approval.

Key to the sudden shift seems to be a submission from Dr. Ryan Walker, an urban planning and geography professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Walker, with the help of colleagues from across the country made the case that diminishing supplies of rental housing will lead to further labour shortages in “key worker occupations.”

Read the Star Phoenix story 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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

Earlier today, I was speaking with one of my colleagues, Bruce Claggett, who raised the question, “I wonder how many of the homes for sale in Saskatoon are vacant?” Our new MLS system didn’t provide a method of searching by occupancy, so I dropped SRAR an email and suggested that this would be a valuable search field to add. By the end of the day, Harry made it happen.

Here’s what I learned.

At the close of business today, there are 666 active property listings in the residential category (I know, kind of spooky). :)

225 of those properties are vacant.

Tenants occupy another 130 of these listings.

A closer look at the vacant property listings reveals the following.

93 are condos.

104 are single-family homes.

The balances are semi-detached homes, duplexes, mobile homes, vacant lots and other properties that have not been categorized for reasons unknown to me.

94 of the vacant homes are new, or near new.

57 of the new or near new homes appear to be owned by builders. Some are still under construction.

Individuals own 37 of the new or near new homes.

Of the 225 vacant listings, 93 are condominiums.

21 of these vacant condominiums are new, or near new.

10 are in the Rumley building representing additions to the housing stock.

About two-thirds of the remaining 62 are conversion units.

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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra

My mid-month “closer look” pretty much always follows SRAR’s month end stats, but then SRAR pretty much always releases month end stats at the end of the month. Due to issues that arise from the way that SRAR normally reports the numbers, combined with the quirks of a new MLS system, those numbers are still not available. SRAR’s reluctance to release their numbers leave me feeling somewhat concerned, but I’ve gone through the data pretty closely and I believe these numbers are probably reliable (yes, that’s a disclaimer, and I have already updated them once so tread carefully). In any case, I’m throwing caution to the wind and releasing my numbers because I know that some of you are seriously thirsty for some monthly stats. So drink it up folks.

Please note that I’ve added a new column to our charts that provide the average price per square foot in each category. Hopefully this figure adds another bit of perspective as to what’s happening over the long term.

Starting with the “house and condo” category, we can see that the average selling price of a Saskatoon home reached a new high of $287,959 for the month of March. This number is up from $266,573 in February, and represents a 40% increase from March 2007 when the average came in at $203,605. Unit sales saw a small decrease from 388 units last year to 364 units this year. Given that inventory has increased substantially over last year, we can really only conclude that demand is also starting to soften somewhat. This is a natural effect of rising prices. As prices rise, fewer buyers can afford to buy.

The drop in unit sales is significantly deeper when it comes to single-family homes (houses). 233 houses sold during March of 2008, compared to 295 in March of 2007, a drop of 21%. On the other hand, prices went through the roof rising to an average of $326,633, up a whopping 57% year over year. Houses averaged $208,123 in March of 2007, and had risen to $310,533 through February of this year.

Unit sales in the condo category showed remarkable strength due to a better affordability factor. Sales actually increased over March of 2007 from 93, to 131 sales, a gain of 41%. The average selling price showed a weakness that is equally remarkable when compared to the tremendous gains in house prices.

The average selling price of a condo was up just 16%, year over year, from $189,275 to $219,173. This relatively small increase can be attributed to a number of condo conversion projects that offered small, entry-level units priced at $125,000 or less. There were enough of these units sold early this year to skew the numbers down. When I look to a specific condo development and compare sales from March 2008 and March 2007, I see differences that are closer to 40%. For instance, three level town homes in Lakewood were trading at a high of $190,000 in March of 2007. Sales from March of 2008 show comparable units selling for $265,000. These numbers are probably more reflective of what’s been happening with condos.

In any case, year over year gains have been far stronger in the single-family category, and this seems fitting, given the fact that condos saw far greater increases than houses through 2007. The prices in the two categories had just become too close.

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.

Follow our daily updates on Twitter @SaskatoonHomes.

Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra