The Saskatoon real estate market took a step back on all fronts this week as local agents reported just 47 firm residential sales to the multiple listing service®. That number is down 10 from the previous week’s volume, and lower by nine when compared to sales for the same week last year.

While sales were lukewarm at best, new listing activity plummeted to December-like levels. Just 95 Saskatoon homes hit the market this week, down from 146 the week before, and lower annually by 37 units.

Sales

At a time of year when inventory gains are the norm, the number of active MLS® listings available to Saskatoon home buyers retreated modestly. As of this morning, there are 1444 residential properties showing an active status on the multiple listing service®. That’s down nine from last week’s close, and lower than the number available a year earlier when inventory stood at 1536. Today’s total include 803 single-family homes, down from 812 a year ago, and 555 condos, which is five fewer than were available at the close of the same week last year.

Active

The average sale price of a Saskatoon home sold this past week was $317,798 while the median sale price was $303,000. Both of those measures were fairly stable on a weekly basis.

The longer-term measures both took a dive, but again, we are now looking back at some of the smallest sales weeks of the past 12 months and you can’t take much away from that. Still, the six-week average price fell to its lowest point in the chart in five years time. It registered at $309,335 for an annual decline of more than 30K. The four-week median also tumbled into the depths as it settled at $277,250, down more than 50K from the close of the same week last year.

Price

One lusky seller saw a bidding war unfold but buyers were well reserved and the highest bidder paid just $100 more than the asking price. Meanwhile, 44 of the week’s 47 sales was reported to have sold at a discount averaging $16,202.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that those sales that do show a sale price that is greater than the list price are all new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. We report these to you as “at list price sales”, which is likely too generous in some cases, but it’s simply not practical to obtain the full details of each sale.

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More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them.

General

Thank-you for reading TeamFisher’s Saskatoon Real Estate Week in Review.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Please feel free to call or text me at 306-241-6676 or reach me by email at norm at teamfisher dot com.

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Saskatoon real estate agents continued to post sales numbers that exceeded the previous year’s totals for the second week in a row. This past week, 57 Saskatoon homes traded hands, up from 39 during the previous week and beating sales for the same period last year by nine.

The number of new listings added to the Saskatoon MLS® also grew as 146 properties entered the system for a weekly gain of eight and an annual increase of six.

Sales

The number of Saskatoon homes listed for sale continued to grow. By this morning, buyers had a total of 1453 properties to choose from. That’s up 44 units from a week ago, but down 72 from levels recorded at the close of the third week of 2018. A  listing search for detached single-family homes shows 801 results today, up from 783 a week earlier, and down from 813 at this time last year. A condo search generates 560 results for a weekly increase of 14 units and an annual decline of 53.

Interestingly, it appears that condo inventory is finally looking manageable. According to numbers recently presented to Saskatoon home builders by CMHC, the supply of multi-family units which are “complete but unabsorbed” has fallen consistently and at a good pace for the past two years. They have slipped from more than 700 vacant units in early 2017 to just over 200 today. Those numbers are at their lowest point since new starts exploded in 2014 and are now at levels which were manageable through the middle years of this decade.

Active

Price figures are still iffy and based on some of the smallest samples we’ll see all year. Consequently, they are subject to wild swings from one week to the next. For instance, the average sale price of a Saskatoon home was $313,777 this past week. That’s about $55,000 higher than it was the week before when not a single home had traded above 500K. The median price also took a huge jump gaining almost $75,000 from the previous period to reach more normal levels at $305,000.

The longer term measures also show pretty significant change. The six-week average price fell about fifteen thousand dollars from a week earlier to settle at $321,154. That’s also down on an annual basis by an equal amount. The four-week median price finished the week at $298,100 for a weekly decline of 23K and an annual change of $32,000.

Price

Home sellers were completely shut out when it comes to overbidding activity. Meanwhile, 55 of this week’s 57 sales closed at a price that was lower than the seller’s asking price generating an average discount of $14,965.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that those sales that do show a sale price that is greater than the list price are all new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. We report these to you as “at list price sales”, which is likely too generous in some cases, but it’s simply not practical to obtain the full details of each sale.

List

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them.

General

Thank-you for reading TeamFisher’s Saskatoon Real Estate Week in Review.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Please feel free to call or text me at 306-241-6676 or reach me by email at norm at teamfisher dot com.

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), released national sales statistics for December of 2018 today.

According to the report, "Home sales via Canadian MLS® Systems fell by 2.5% in December 2018 compared to November, capping the weakest annual sales since 2012. Monthly declines in activity since September have fully retrenched its summer rally and returned it near the lowest level since early 2013."

"Transactions declined in about 60% of all local markets in December, led by lower activity in Greater Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Ottawa, London & St. Thomas, and Halifax-Dartmouth, together with a regionally diverse mix of other large and medium-sized urban centres."

Highlights of CREA's report

• National home sales fell 2.5% from November to December.
• Actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was down by 19% from one year ago.
• The number of newly listed homes was little changed from November to December.
• The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) was up 1.6% year-over-year (y-o-y) in December.

• The national average sale price fell by 4.9% y-o-y in December.

Read the entire report on Canadian MLS® sales for December of 2018.

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 second week of 2019 is now in the books and the Saskatoon real estate market showed a little promise. Local REALTORS® reported 39 firm residential trades to the multiple listing service, up 16 from the previous week, and enough to top sales for the same week last year by seven.

New listing activity also grew. Over the course of the past week, 138 Saskatoon homes were added to the MLS® for a weekly gain of 36 and a year-over-year decline of 18.

Sales

Active listing inventory began to climb after having fallen to its lowest point in a year the previous week. Today, there are 1409 residential listings showing an active status, up 38 from the last week’s close and down annually by 113.

A closer look at the major housing types reveals that buyers have a selection of 783 single-family homes, down just marginally from 817 at this time last year. Condominium inventory is now at 546 having grown by 21 since last week. That is well down from the 607 units that were available a year ago.

Active

Prices fell lower by every measure we track. The small number of sales that occur at this time of year provides for some pretty erratic spikes and dips from one week to the next, so these should be viewed suspiciously.

This week saw not a single sale over the $500,000 mark. Further, there were two mobile home sales that didn’t amount to $15,000 between them. Add to that mix 10 residential sales reporting a price below the $150,000 mark and you get a recipe for wild swings. The median price (the point at which half of all sales are above, and half are below) of a Saskatoon home was just $230,000, while the average sale price for the week was $238,976.

Our longer-term measures are equally suspect as they’re based on the smallest sample of sales that the two measures will likely include during any week this year. These two measures both made some weekly declines that were nothing compared to the solid lumps they took when comparing numbers from a year ago. The six-week average price edge slipped by more than 10K on a weekly basis to reach $318,182 falling lower annually by about 18K. Meanwhile, the four-week median price fell more than 35K from last week to settle at $286,000 to claim an annual loss of $49,000.

Price

One lucky home seller saw a little overbidding activity that drove the closing price of their home above the asking price by $6,100 while 36 of this week’s trades produced a sale netting the buyer an average discount of $16,673.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that those sales that do show a sale price that is greater than the list price are all new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. We report these to you as “at list price sales”, which is likely too generous in some cases, but it’s simply not practical to obtain the full details of each sale.

List

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them.

General

Thank-you for reading TeamFisher’s Saskatoon Real Estate Week in Review.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Please feel free to call or text me at 306-241-6676 or reach me by email at norm at teamfisher dot com.

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Homebuyer confidence affected by employment uncertainty and increases in home financing costs SASKATOON,

January 11, 2019 – According to the Royal LePage House Price Survey released today, the aggregate price of a home in Saskatoon saw a moderate decrease in the fourth quarter of 2018, decreasing 1.7 per cent year-over-year to $371,486.

When broken out by housing type, the median price of a two-storey home decreased 0.4 per cent year-over-year to $407,286. During the same period, the median price of a bungalow decreased 3.5 per cent year-over-year to $330,663.

“High levels of inventory coupled with a significant decline in demand have led to moderate decreases in the region’s home prices,” said Norm Fisher, Broker and owner, Royal LePage Vidorra.

“The increased costs of financing a home have also contributed to the slowdown in the Saskatoon real estate market. The stress test that came into effect in January of 2018 along with interest rate increases have made it tougher for first-time homebuyers,” added Fisher.

“At the same time, the commodities sector slump continues to weigh down the city’s housing market. As our provincial economy heavily relies on mineral extraction, uncertainty regarding employment in the oil and uranium industries is affecting homebuyers’ confidence.”

Nationally, year-over-year home prices made healthy gains in many regions across Canada in the fourth quarter of 2018. The Royal LePage National House Price Composite, compiled from proprietary property data in 63 of the nation’s largest real estate markets, showed that the price of a home in Canada increased 4.0 per cent year-over-year to $631,223 in the fourth quarter of 2018.

When broken out by housing type, the median price of a two-storey home rose 3.9 per cent year-over-year to $745,007, while the median price of a bungalow climbed 1.5 per cent to $516,950. Condominiums continued to see the highest rate of appreciation nationally when compared to the detached segment, rising 7.2 per cent year-over-year to $447,915.

“The invisible hand that guides our complex economy hit the real estate reset button in 2018 and that is a good thing,” said Phil Soper, president and CEO, Royal LePage.

“Major market home price inflation through much of the decade had led to dangerous overheating in our most populous regions. Government regulatory intervention and rising interest rates, when combined with property price overshooting, triggered the correctional cycle we find ourselves working through today.” 

Read also - Global News - Mortgage stress test, higher interest rates affecting Saskatoon's real estate market

And, we’re off! The first week of a new year for the Saskatoon real estate market is now behind us.

After closing 2018 with unit sales hitting the trough, residential trades saw a slight increase as 23 properties changed hands, up five from the week before, and down by four compared to the opening week of 2018.

New listings took a massive weekly increases as those numbers grew from just 25 over Christmas week to 102 this period. That number is lower than it was for the same period last year when 117 Saskatoon homes were offered for sale.

Sales

The total number of active residential listings on the Saskatoon multiple listing service® hit its lowest point for any single week since early 2015. Today, there are 1371 Saskatoon homes available for home buyers, a drop of 127 from last week’s close, and down about a hundred units from where it stood as the 2018 calendar year began.

The largest declines are seen in the condominium inventory which fell from 582 a year ago to 525 today. While condo sales have been showing some gains in recent months the math is telling me that most of the inventory decline can be attributed to the hefty number of year end expired listings which will likely resurface in the weeks ahead. The number of detached homes for sale slipped from 808 a year ago to 764 today. Again, this category shows a weekly decline of 72. With total sales for the week at just 23 units, these drops are also the result of expired listings.

Active

Let’s not read much into the pricing data as averages are very unreliable when there are hardly any sales. That said, the weekly median price of a Saskatoon home slipped to just $279,500. That’s the lowest weekly median we’ve seen since the opening week of 2018. With just one sale reporting a price above $500,000 the weekly average was also low at $307,317. The six-week average price slipped lower by a couple of thousand dollars from last week to settle at $335,777. That’s about where it was at the close of the same week a year ago. The four-week median price fell $5500 from last week to close this period at $322,450. It claimed an annual increase of $4500.

Price

One Saskatoon home seller made off with a deal that was $100 above asking price, while 19 others found themselves being ground for a discount that averaged $13,763.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that those sales that do show a sale price that is greater than the list price are all new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. We report these to you as “at list price sales”, which is likely too generous in some cases, but it’s simply not practical to obtain the full details of each sale.

List

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them.

General

Thank-you for reading TeamFisher’s Saskatoon Real Estate Week in Review.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Please feel free to call or text me at 306-241-6676 or reach me by email at norm at teamfisher dot com.

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

December home sales through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS®) totaled 164 in Saskatoon, 20 percent fewer than were sold in December of 2017. The region surrounding Saskatoon had 43 MLS® sales in December of 2018, down just one from the same period last year. The total number of residential sales for 2018 in Saskatoon was 3,329, a five percent decline compared to the previous year. 2018 is the fourth straight year of declining Saskatoon home sales. By comparison, there were 4,417 MLS® homes that traded hands in 2014, a peak sales year for Saskatoon. There was no change in the total annual sales for the surrounding region with 986 residential MLS® transactions recorded.

The total dollar volume for MLS® residential sales in Saskatoon in December was $55.6 million, down 20 percent from December of 2017. The total dollar volume for the entire year reached $1.108 billion, down eight percent from 2017. The combined dollar volume for Saskatoon and region last year was down four percent for the year at $1.524 billion.

Residential MLS® listing totals for the year were also lower than in previous years. 7,956 residential listings were recorded for Saskatoon in 2018. This is an 11 percent reduction from 2017’s total of 8,969. The five-year average for new listings in Saskatoon is 9,081 per year.

“Even though sales are down, having fewer new listings has helped,” comments Jason Yochim, CEO of the Saskatoon Region Association of REALTORS® (SRAR). Active listings fell to 1,487 by the end of the year. This is consistent with the five-year average of 1,480 available properties and well below peak listing numbers seen in July of 2017 when there were 2,210 homes for sale in the city of Saskatoon. “Available properties will vary depending on the neighbourhood, price range and style,” cautions Yochim. “Some price ranges still have a good supply to choose from while others do not.”

When it comes to home price trends, the best indicator of what is happening with home prices is the MLS® Home Price Index. The Home Price Index establishes attributes for a typical single-family home with a base value in 2005. From that starting point, changes in value are recorded over time to get a better sense of where prices may be trending. The value for the typical single-family home when the index began in January of 2005 was $140,400. This value reached its peak in May of 2015 at $329,500. At the end of December, it had slipped to $307,000, down from $310,900 a month earlier. December’s number is virtually unchanged from a year ago, however, it had been trending downward since the middle of 2018.

Jason Yochim CAE, CRAE
Chief Executive Officer – Saskatoon Region Association of REALTORS®