New listingswere also stronger than expected as Saskatoon home sellers offered up twenty-five single-family homes and condominiums over the course of the week, a drop of five from the week before and up from thirteen compared to the same week in 2009.
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Total active listings took their biggest month end dip for the year as one hundred and twenty-one Saskatoon home listings expired without a sale. The corresponding drop to residential inventory moved it below the 800 mark for the first time since last February to close December with 788 listings, 134 units lower than it was at this time last week but still higher than the 619 properties available at the close of 2009. This isn’t at all unusual for December, and often, a couple of pretty aggressive listing weeks can follow as some of these homes come back on the market in early January. Condominiums saw the greatest week-over week percentage decline sliding from 363 units last week to 298. Single-family homes slid sixty-seven units over the course of the week to close at 439.
Inventory appears to be in reasonably decent shape with a supply of single-family homes below four months and condos at less than six based on December sales, which will almost certainly represent the trough, at least for the next few months. Still, if the active listings chart makes anything clear, it’s this; where you start the year provides little insight into where you might end up. We came into 2008 with some of the weakest numbers we’ve ever seen and ultimately reached record highs. In 2009, we entered with record highs and finished toward normal lows.
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Listing cancellation and withdrawal activity reached its lowest point for the year with just eight contracts coming out of the system. Two went back up immediately as a new listing. An additional twelve properties saw a price adjustment.
While the median sale price for the week remained pretty stable at $279,500, the average selling price of a Saskatoon home moved sharply lower this week sliding more than thirty-five thousand dollars to $282,254. The six-week average selling priced edged lower to $307,178 losing nearly four thousand dollars on the week while gaining about fifteen thousand compared to the same period in 2009. The four-week median actually reached it’s lowest point since late August as it slipped marginally below the lows of late October and early November to settle at $280,000 bringing a week-over-week decline of nine thousand dollars and a year-over-year gain of just $2,750.
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A quiet week for sellers seems to have brought some benefits for buyers. We not only saw some of the lowest prices since the middle of 2010 but some of the deepest discounts and the highest percentage of underbid sales. Buyers came up with a discount averaging $13,636, or 4.6% of the asking price in twenty-nine of the thirty deals reported this week. One seller managed an overbid of just $349.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra