Buyer Beware: This real estate commission plan could have your agent working against you.

If you're in the market to buy a home you should definitely be aware of this potentially problematic commission plan that could have your agent working against you. This two-minute video explains how, or review the transcript below.

Transcript

Home buyers occasionally ask the question, how does a real estate agent get paid to help me buy a home?

And in this province, in most cases, the real estate commission that the buyer's agent earns is paid for by the seller or generated by the transaction, and in most cases, it's a percentage of the sale price.

Commissions are problematic in the sense that, as a buyer's agent, I'm charged with the responsibility to help you get the lowest price, but I actually get paid more money if you pay more for a house. So you can see how that can be problematic.

In Saskatchewan, most real estate listings pay on a declining scale, though, so I might earn 3% on the first $100,000 of the sale price, 2% on the second $100,000, and 1% on the balance, so ultimately, if you pay an extra $5000 for a house, I make an additional $50, and I would say, for most people, that's probably not enough to influence them to bad behavior.

But not all commission programs work that way. In fact, there are some properties on the market from time to time that work on an inclining scale, and an agent might be offered 20% on the final portion of the selling price. So if you pay an extra $5000 for a home, they get an extra $1000 in their pocket, and you should know that.

So when you're ready to write an offer on a home, ask the real estate agent, what is the commission being paid on this home? You have a right to know that, you have a responsibility to know that, so that you can understand whether or not there might be some biases at play there, that you should take into account when you're deciding how much to pay.

Ask.

You have a right to know.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Saskatoon real estate sales grew for the third consecutive week to reach a new annual peak. By the close of the week, local agents had reported 99 firm residential trades to the multiple listing service®, for a weekly increase of eight sales. While that number falls short of meeting the 114 deals that closed over the same week last year, it continues to look more like spring activity than winter. 

Promising.

New listing activity fell on both a weekly and an annual basis. A total of 158 residential listings were added to the Saskatoon MLS® this week, down nine from last week, and 30 units short of last year’s number for the same period.

The total number of MLS® listings available to buyers grew modestly, now for the fourth consecutive week. 

By this morning, there are a total of 1537 Saskatoon homes showing an “active” status on the MLS®. That’s up just 17 from last week’s close, and well below the 1879 active listings that buyers had to choose from a year ago.

Today’s totals include 886 single-family homes, down 180 properties annually, and 579 condominium units, down from 671 at the close of the same week last year.

A bit more activity at the lower end of the Saskatoon real estate market brought the weekly median sale price of a local home lower by 5K to $324,900. Meanwhile, two residential sales above the million-dollar mark pushed the weekly average higher by nearly 20K to $372,295.

Those two large sales also pushed the six-week average price higher. It grew by more than twelve thousand dollars from last week’s close and reached $348,911 to claim an annual gain of roughly the same amount. The four-week median price fell lower by just $1000 to $337,000 on a weekly basis while showing a seven thousand dollar annual increase. 

Just one lucky seller sold at a price that exceeded their asking price as they pocketed a $3,700 bonus. On the flip side of the negotiating table, we see 90 sales recording a discount to the buyer which averaged $17,410. That’s number is significantly higher than what's expected. It was skewed up by a quarter-million-dollar discount on those two million dollar plus sales. Together, they drove the average discount higher by about $2500.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that this chart may show over list price sales, even when I have reported the number as 0. Those sales are typically new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely sold and included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. For example, a new home listed at $450,000 sells at a price of $490,000 after 120 days on the market may have included a basement development that was not anticipated in the listing 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.

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them. 

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

An upward sales trend continued for the Saskatoon real estate market this week as local REALTORS® reported 91 firm residential sales to the multiple listing service®. That is the highest number of residential trades for any week this year. 

That was 15 more sales than were recorded the previous week. More interestingly, it’s the first time since the final week of March that we saw sales increase on an annual basis. Over the same week last year, Saskatoon real estate agents finalized just 73 deals.

Home sales, while well down on a year-over-year basis have been showing remarkable and steady improvements over May. Where April sales fell 45% annually, May sales are down just 24%. 

The inventory of active residential listings inched higher this week. It grew from 1505 last week to 1522 today, to finish down annually by 388 properties. That represents a year-over-year decline of roughly 20%. 

There are currently 877 Saskatoon houses for sale, down from 1079 a year ago. Additionally, there are 569 Saskatoon condos in the mix, down from 709 at the close of the same week last year.

The median sale price of a Saskatoon home fell to $329,900 for a weekly decline of more than 30K as a surge of lower end sales occurred. The average price for the week moved in the opposite direction as it grew by about eight thousand dollars from the previous week’s close. This was largely due to a good handful of trades above the $500,000 mark.

The six-week average price took its seventh consecutive weekly decline as it lost just $150 to settle at $336,450. That’s down annually by just under $4500. The four-week median price held firm at $338,000 which is higher than it was at this time last year by eighteen thousand dollars.

One lucky seller parlayed a multiple offer situation into a bonus of $5100 more than their asking price. Meanwhile, 84 of the week’s 91 sales closed for less than list price to net those buyers an average discount of $12,191.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that this chart may show over list price sales, even when I have reported the number as 0. Those sales are typically new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely sold and included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. For example, a new home listed at $450,000 sells at a price of $490,000 after 120 days on the market may have included a basement development that was not anticipated in the listing 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.

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them. 

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

The top challenge for Saskatoon home sellers...

...is getting buyers through the front door.

Pre-internet times, buyers often inspected dozens of homes before choosing one.

By 2019, that number had fallen to 10 (on average).

Post-COVID?

Far fewer.

There's no solid statistical data available yet but everyone in this business can see it.

Buyers are doing their homework to shorten the viewing list.

And they're ruthless.

Sellers.

1) Prepare your home well. Fix what's broken. Freshen what's looking a bit tired or ugly.

2) Up your presentation game. Your home must show well online or it won't make the view list. Great photos and 3D video tours are a must.

3) Promote that home to get it in front of buyers many times. It pays to be persistent and obvious.

4) Price the home well. You don't have to be cheap but this isn't a good time to be trying to set new records. If you're priced ten percent above recent sales you won't be getting many visits.

Transcript

I've been very interested in following how those who are buying Saskatoon homes are responding to the whole COVID-19 crisis.

So at the end of last month, there were 213 homes that had traded hands, and I reached out to every seller's agent that was involved in those 213 transactions. I heard back from 155 of them, and my question was, "Had they done a transaction during the month of April in which a buyer had written an offer and removed conditions without ever seeing the house?"

And in 155 of 155 responses, the answer was no.

In every instance the buyers that bought did a physical inspection of the house at some point prior to removal of conditions. Which totally makes sense to me, right? These are massive financial commitments that can have implications for a long period of time. You stay in a house for seven, eight, nine, 10 years, you wanna make sure that you're making the right decision.

So it seems obvious to me that buyers would want to get in and look before they make that kind of commitment.

But the other thing that was very clear to me is that buyers are looking at far fewer homes than they used to.

Before the internet was a thing, people would look at 25 to 30 homes, and when the internet became a thing that kind of fell under 10. And it looks to me now that it's more like under five.

So that means that buyers are doing a lot more qualifying of properties online, and they're eliminating properties online, choosing not to see them before they actually go and do that physical viewing.

So my advice today is for home sellers, you need to be keenly aware of how buyers are shopping, and your presentation piece needs to be very well done.

So good staging, good photos, nice 3D tours or videos that give buyers some real insight into what your home has to offer before they come out to see it.

Those are the kind of things that are gonna encourage a buyer ultimately to come and see your home, and hopefully make an offer on it.

________________________________

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Saskatoon real estate sales reached a new weekly high for the year this week as local agents reported 76 firm residential trades to the MLS®. That’s up sharply from 49 last week, but it falls short of sales recorded over the same period last year by 19. 

That’s our strongest “year-over-year” performance for unit sales since the second week of April.

The market, in general, seems to be trending towards higher levels of activity. You may recall that April saw sales decline 45 percent, compared to April of 2019. By the middle of May, sales are down 34 percent from May 2019. Still not great, but improving. There seems to be a positive vibe right now. We’ll see how that translates to sales but I have a feeling we will see continued improvements through the balance of May, assuming that circumstances around COVID don’t throw us a serious curveball.

New listings numbers were also fairly strong as 174 Saskatoon homes were added to the multiple listing service®. That number is down 11 units from last week, and further down by 46 homes when compared to new listings taken over the same week last year.

Active MLS® listings grew again, this week by 32 units. As of this morning, there were 1504 residential listings available on the system, which represents a new high for the year. Inventory previously peaked at 1502, just before the state of emergency was declared in Saskatoon. Still, a huge gap remains when we look back at inventory levels a year ago. At that time, Saskatoon real estate agents had 1890 listings for sale.

This week, the median sale price of a Saskatoon moved higher by more than eleven thousand dollars to reach $361,500. Meanwhile, the average sale price for the week slipped lower by 15K as it moved to $344,953.

The six-week average price took its sixth consecutive weekly decline as it slipped about ten thousand dollars from last week to settle at $336,604. That’s roughly $3500 lower than it was a year ago.

The four-week median price closed the week at $338,000, up a little more than 10K from last week, and higher annually by thirteen thousand dollars.

Just two sellers closed a deal for more than their asking price. Those two overbids were each worth $5,100 to the sellers.

On the other hand, 70 Saskatoon home buyers managed to grind their sellers down for a discount that averaged $14,288.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that this chart may show over list price sales, even when I have reported the number as 0. Those sales are typically new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely sold and included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. For example, a new home listed at $450,000 sells at a price of $490,000 after 120 days on the market may have included a basement development that was not anticipated in the listing 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.

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them. 

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) recently released national sales statistics for April of 2020.

According to the report, "Home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems dropped by a record 56.8% in April 2020 compared to an already weakened March, with a majority of sellers and buyers having seemingly moved off to the sidelines during the COVID-19 lockdown."

 Highlights of CREA's report

• National home sales fell 56.8% on a month-over-month (m-o-m) basis in April.
• The actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was down a similar 57.6% year-over-year (y-o-y).
•  The number of newly listed properties decreased 55.7% from March to April.
• The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) edged back 0.6% m-o-m but was still up 6.4% y-o-y.
•  The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average sale price fell 1.3% y-o-y.

Read the entire report on Canadian MLS® sales for April of 2020.

________________________________

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Transcript

________________________________

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Saskatoon home sellers showed their spring spirit this week as local REALTORS® added 184 residential properties to the MLS® system. That number is up from 147 last week, and down from 226 for the same week last year, but it’s more or less what you’d expect as an average number in the April and May period. 

Through the COVID-19 crisis, it has been our sellers showing the greatest reluctance to trade, which makes a lot of sense. After all, they are the ones that have to invite strangers into their space to make this work.

After four consecutive weeks of sales gains, Saskatoon real estate sales took a dip. Local agents processed just 49 firm sales this week. That’s down 20 units from last week, and far further down from the 90 sales reported over the same week last year.

At this point, May is looking a lot like April with sales down about 45 percent on a year-over-year basis but there seems to be a high level of interest in buying. Will more listing options draw more buyers into the market. I suspect so, just based on activity on our own listings, and what I’m hearing from others. We’ll see what the next few weeks bring.

The total number of Saskatoon homes available on the multiple listing service® took its largest single-week gain this year as it grew by 77 units to reach 1472. That’s down from 1818 a year ago, but the highest level we’ve seen since the third week of March when inventory peaked at 1502 and then began to slide.

At the close of the week, there were 857 single-family homes for sale in Saskatoon. That’s 50 more than could be found a week earlier, but well down from the 1010 available last year at this time. Condo inventory sits at 542 today, up from 516 at last week’s close, and down by 157 from levels recorded a year ago.

With nearly 20 percent of this week’s sales reporting a sale price of $500,000 or more, both the weekly median sale price and the weekly average price grew. Those measures hit $350,000 and $359,128 respectively.

The six-week average price fell lower for the fourth consecutive week. It landed at $346,700. That’s about a thousand dollars lower than it was last week, and about ten grand higher than it was at the close of the same week last year.

The four-week median price saw some gains this week as it grew to $327,500. That’s up $2500 from last week, and down forty-five hundred dollars on an annual basis.

There were just three overbid sales this week but a couple of those sellers won big. 

This week’s sales produced the largest overbid I can recall seeing in Saskatoon at $120,100. That seller reportedly hosted 33 home showings over the period of a few days and received 14 offers on the home. That’s quite remarkable given that it was the highest-priced home to sell this week. Another seller saw a bonus that topped 20K. The average overbid was $48,433 (another solid example of how averages can be so concealing of reality).

Meanwhile, 44 buyers managed to close a deal below the seller’s asking price at a discount averaging $11,754.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that this chart may show over list price sales, even when I have reported the number as 0. Those sales are typically new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely sold and included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. For example, a new home listed at $450,000 sells at a price of $490,000 after 120 days on the market may have included a basement development that was not anticipated in the listing 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.

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them. 

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra