Having just celebrated my sixteenth Christmas holiday season as a Realtor, I’ve learned over the years that you just can’t expect much of this particular week. Close your local MLS for three of the five regular business days and pretty much expect sales and listings to fall off of the map. This year was no different.
Just 15 new Saskatoon real estate listings hit the board this week including 13 single-family homes and 2 condominiums. Total active residential listings settled at 1,292 properties, down 36 units from the previous week, among them, 782 houses and 429 condos.
Sales were equally weak with a total of 15 homes firming up a final sale including 11 houses and 4 condominiums.
Price results for the Saskatoon homes that did sell proved to be a little more interesting, but again, with only 15 units in the review there isn’t much of a conclusion that can be drawn from the numbers. Given that the median price for the week was just $195,000 and the highest sale recorded was $356,900 it’s not much of a surprise that the average sale price plummeted to just $214,500, the lowest weekly average for the 2008 calendar year. I actually had to re-format the vertical axis on the “Averages” graph to make this week’s review work. The six-week average managed to drop nearly $8,500, falling from $279,240 last week to $270,782 this week and reaching its lowest level since the week of March 10-14 when it was $265,040. The four-week median selling price also took a pretty good dive dropping to $245,000, down a full $10,000 from the week before when it closed at $255,000 and reaching levels not seen since early this year. In fact, only two other weeks in 2008 produced a lower four-week median.
Now, it seems to me that most of the time that we see a spike, or a large decline in the weekly average, prices bounce in the opposite direction the following week. I fully expect that will happen next week but, with another short week ahead of us, it’s quite conceivable that next week could bring similar results. If it does, the four-week median would almost certainly fall again, perhaps back to 2007 territory.
The average underbid fell fairly substantially this past week from $15,455 to just $12,525. However, when calculating the average underbid as a percentage of the average asking price it’s pretty much bang on with the week before. The big number discounts ($20K plus) shrunk significantly from nearly 20% last week to 7% this week. The $15,001-$20,000 underbid made a pretty big comeback accounting for 27% of all recorded sales. Action in the $10,001 to $15,000, and the $5,001 to $10,000 categories took a smaller percentage of sales while the up to $5,000 range grew from 22% of sales last week to 33% this week.
I hope that you’re all having a pleasant and relaxing break over the holidays. Best wishes for a safe and happy New Year celebration followed by an outstanding 2009 for you and yours. Thanks again for reading and contributing.
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.
Norm Fisher Royal LePage Vidorra