The Saskatoon real estate market rebounded as local agents reported 67 firm residential transactions to the multiple listing service® this week, up 20 units from the previous period and topping sales for the same week last year by 13. One could easily get the sense that “new mortgage rules” scheduled to take effect on January 1 are pushing an unseasonably strong sales run. Most of the deals I’ve looked at over the past six weeks have been high ratio mortgages that are unaffected by the changes.
The number of new listings that were added to the MLS® increased just slightly to 109 from 106 a week earlier, down eight from the same week last year.
Active listing inventory remained at record levels for the week, but just barely. This morning there are 1740 Saskatoon homes available on the multiple listing service®. At the close of the same week in 2015 there were 1739. That said, today’s levels are higher than they were last year at this time when 1687 homes were for sale on the MLS. As has been the case for the past few months, the largest gains are recorded in the single-family homes category which sits at 968 today, up from 899 a year ago. There are 655 condominiums for sale today, up from 638 at this time last year.
Strong sales activity for homes priced below $200,000 ushered the weekly median price of a Saskatoon home lower to $323,000. Still, with more than 15 percent of the weekly sales at or above the $500,000 mark the weekly average price moved higher by close to 20K as it reached $342,801. The six-week average grew again for the third week in a row to reach its highest point in two months, $343,009, to take an annual loss of less than two thousand dollars, the smallest year-over-year decline in three months time. The four-week median price grew by four thousand dollars from the previous week’s close and hit $320,000 which is still down by fifteen thousand dollars from levels recorded a year ago.
Sellers hoping for some serious competitive action that might drive their sale price above their asking price found no love this week, however, five did manage to close a full price deal, all of those new homes. Meanwhile 62 buyers ground themselves a discount that averaged $14,723. The highest average discount was seen in area two at $20,895 where a couple of high-end homes that closed 40-50K below list price skewed a fairly small number of sales. It seems to me that the month of December can pretty typically be counted on the produce the lowest percentage of overbid sales and some of the highest list to sale price spreads.
Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ration looked like on this week’s sales.
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