New listings slid, falling ten units from last week, and five from the same week in 2008 as just fifty-seven homes were added to the Saskatoon MLS system.
Saskatoon MLS listings (all residential) fell again, but more significantly than we’ve seen in recent weeks as nearly five percent of the active listings expired at the end of November pushing the total inventory to just eight hundred and seventeen units, its lowest level since the last week of April 2008. As of this morning, there are just four hundred and eighty-four detached houses and two hundred and eighty-two condominiums showing an active status on the multiple listing service. Active single-family home listings are down forty-four percent from the same week last year when eight hundred and sixty-two houses were offered for sale. Active condo listings are down forty-one percent, year-over-year. At this time in 2008 there were four hundred and sixty-three condos for sale in Saskatoon.
Cancelled and withdrawn listings came in at thirty-one, and eighteen of those properties were immediately brought back in as a new listing. Just nineteen sellers adjusted their asking price this week.
It was a week of extremes when it comes to Saskatoon home prices. Buoyed by a number of upper end sales including three at a half-million or higher the average selling price for the week came in exceptionally strong at $303,211. Interestingly, prices have only broke the $300K barrier a half dozen times this year, with four of those occurrences happening in a ninety day window from the second week of September until now. The six-week average gained over five thousand dollars on the previous week to finish at $277,893 about six thousand dollars lower than the same week in 2008. The four-week median soared gaining over nineteen thousand dollars on the week to $282,328, a gain of more than twelve thousand dollars on the same week last year.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph. 
The average underbid on Saskatoon homes that sold for less than the asking price grew with higher prices to $11,049 up from $9,876 the week before. Expressed as a percentage of the asking price, the average discount slipped to 3.6%, just slightly lower than last week’s 3.7%. The percentage of sellers who completed a deal within ten thousand dollars of their asking price fell from eighty-one percent last week to sixty-five percent with pretty much all of that sixteen percent disappearing from the lowest discount bracket of “up to $5,000.”
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra