Saskatoon home sales surged higher this month in spite of persistent low inventory levels and higher mortgage rates but remained lower on a year-over-year basis for the third consecutive month. 

Local REALTORS® reported 397 firm residential trades through the MLS® system during March, well ahead of the 253 sales recorded in February, but down from March of 2022 by close to 100 units, and lower than 2021 by about 170. 

Those are big drops, to be sure, but it’s worth noting that both of those years were off-the-charts crazy. Rates were still ridiculously low and people had strong savings from two years of not going out, or traveling much. So while, demand if definitely down, sales remain historically strong. In fact, with 397 sales, this is the fourth strongest March ever recorded through our MLS, beaten only in 2021, 2022, and in 2007.

Not too shabby.

The largest annual sales declines we see are in the single-family homes category. Up against huge numbers right through the spring of 2022, sales in this category fell a staggering 37 percent compared to last March. Condo sales slipped by 18 percent annually.

View an interactive chart for Saskatoon home sales here.

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If you’re wondering if higher interest rates were having an impact, you’d certainly be onto something. Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing larger declines in the single-family category where prices and mortgage amounts are higher, and therefore, more expensive. 

Still, one can’t help get the feeling that low inventory is a larger impediment to an explosion of sales.

Just 582 Saskatoon homes were listed for sale across March, down from 926 over the same month last year. If you look at the new listings chart for March, April and May of last year you see huge numbers of homes flowing into the system, substantially more than a typical year. 

I believe that many of these listings were delivered to the system by reluctant landlords who got trapped in a property, buying when prices last reached their peak, and then finding themselves underwater when they needed to move. Price increases over 2020 and 2021 saw the tide turn and those losses were recovered allowing these owners to liquidate. That surge in listings fueled an equal surge in sales over that period.

That isn’t happening this year. That pent-up need to sell is done and new listings numbers will seriously lag behind last year for several months, in my view.

So, while there’s no question that demand is down considerably from last year (20%), listing inventory is down 28% from where it was a year ago.

In fact, active listing inventory is lower than it has been at the close of March in at least ten years' time, and I mean sharply lower. The average active listings count for March across the past decade is 1527. Again, we closed March of this year at 923, so we are close to 40 percent below the ten-year average.

You may recall, from my previous “week in review” posts that we use a measure known as “months of inventory” (MOI) to determine if market conditions favour buyers, or sellers, or if there is a balance in market conditions, where neither the buyer nor the seller has a distinct advantage, one over the other.

Here’s what MOI looks like today compared to last March.

March 2022

1281 active listings / 491 sales = 2.6 months of supply.

March 2023

923 active listings / 397 sales = 2.3 months of supply.

When MOI is between four and six, conditions are considered balanced. When MOI is greater than six months, we have a buyer’s market, and it’s below four months we have a seller’s market.

At the end of the day, this is what matters most. It’s the measure that sets the tone for market activity. 

So, while demand is lower, we are deeper into a seller’s market than we were last spring and buyers will continue to face challenging conditions, at least over the short term.

View an interactive chart for Saskatoon's new residential real estate listings and active listings here.

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This supply versus demand imbalance explains why Saskatoon home prices remain at historical March highs, in spite of higher interest rates and falling demand.

The average price of a Saskatoon home grew about $6500 annually to reach $376,608. 

Following five months of delines through the back half of 2022, the benchmark price of a Saskatoon single-family home (MLS® Home Price Index) saw its third consecutive monthly gain as it grew by seven thousand dollars from a year ago to reach $414,400.

The benchmark price of a Saskatoon townhouse fell by 10K last month to settle at $316,000 for an annual increase of eight thousand dollars.

Finally, the benchmark price of a Saskatoon apartment slipped lower for the second month in a row. It’s down six thousand dollars from the previous month, but up on a year-over-year basis by $13,000. It currently sits at $225,500.

View an interactive chart for Saskatoon home prices here.

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TeamFisher.com hosted over 520,000 user sessions last year and displayed more than three million pages to our visitors. 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 306-900-4161 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra