It felt like summer in Saskatchewan this week. Warm and quiet. Quiet, like almost everyone, had gone to the lake kind of quiet. Those around me were reporting fewer consumer calls this week. There seemed to be more time to catch up on projects that had been relegated to that “to-do someday” pile at the right side of the desk. My list got whittled down and that felt good.
The numbers this weekend backed up the feeling. Saskatoon real estate agents reported a total of 81 firm house and condo sales to the local MLS® system this week, a decline of 14 units compared to last week, fewer by 20 when compared against sales for the same week a year ago. This is the lowest number of weekly sales recorded since the first week of April.
New listings of Saskatoon homes held steady on a week-over-week basis at 146 to eclipse last year’s additions to the multiple listing service® for the same period by 33.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
Having appeared to reach its annual peak six or seven weeks ago, the total inventory of residential listings on the multiple listing service® continued to behave rather strangely for the season and experienced its third consecutive weekly increase climbing 22 units to 1255. That number is still well down from the numbers we saw last year at this time when 1417 Saskatoon residential properties displayed an active status. In fact, the final tally is still lower than it has been for four of the past five years but this year’s trend line does suddenly look more like that of 2008 than any of the preceding years. Today there are 776 single-family dwelling and 409 condominiums appearing as ‘for sale’ on the Saskatoon multiple listing service. Last year at this time, those categories sat at 818 and 508 respectively.
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Meanwhile, a bit of the lower end market activity that had been waning over the past couple of weeks came back as the weekly median sale price slipped lower by twelve thousand dollars to $315,000. The average sale price of a Saskatoon home held pretty steadily, down by just eight hundred dollars from the previous week to $329,527. Both of the longer-term measures remained fairly stable on a weekly basis but showed strong annual gains. The six-week average price slipped just four hundred dollars from last week to $334,840 for an annual bounce of nearly thirty thousand dollars. The four-week median price edged lower over the course of the week by about a thousand dollars. It finished at $317,200 to claim an annual gain of about 17K.
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Four lucky Saskatoon home sellers closed a deal for more money than they had hoped for when they set their asking price. On average, they picked up $2,825 more than they listed the home for. Another 13 sold their home for the full asking price. As has been the case throughout the year, the majority of home buyers were able to grind a bit of a deal, at least relative to asking price, as 64 of 81 reported sales showed a price that was lower than the list by an average of $10,897.
In other MLS® activity this week, there were 41 canceled and withdrawn listings, 6 listings that came to the end of their term and expired without a sale and just 34 sellers who adjusted their asking price.
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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
The Royal LePage House Price Survey and Market Survey Forecast released today showed strong year-over-year price increases for all three housing types surveyed in Saskatoon.
