As the final week of November drew to a close the Saskatoon real estate market showed signs of softening, to be expected at this time of the year. Local real estate agents reported just 47 firm sales, down from 66 a week earlier and falling even further when compared to the same week last year when 68 transactions were reported to the MLS®. In spite of the soft closing week, the month of November posted the first year-over-year increase we’ve seen in five months time as total residential sales rose seven percent from the same month last year.
The number of new listings that were added to the multiple listing service also fell lower. Over the course of the week, just 106 Saskatoon homes were placed on the market. That’s ten fewer than the previous week, a decline of 40 units compared to the same period last year. This is the ninth consecutive week in which new listings dropped on an annual basis.
Typical of the final week of the month, a good handful of listings expired from the market without a sale. This month saw 129 such listings leave the system having failed to attract a solid offer that would stick. By the close of the week, total active listings on the MLS had fallen by 78 from numbers recorded last Saturday bringing us to 1778 active residential listings and taking us back to record levels for this particular week. Today’s numbers are up by just 72 listings from levels recorded a year ago. The majority of the increases in available inventory can be counted in the single-family homes category which has grown from 915 a year ago to 1007 today. Condo inventory is marginally higher as it reaches 653, just 13 more than were available at this time last year.
On the heels of a week that showed sharply lower prices in all categories, the average sale price of a Saskatoon home rebounded by about 10K to reach $324,912. The median price for the week grew by a whopping forty thousand dollars to reach $330,000. That simply indicates that there were more high-end sales in the mix than there was the week before. Stronger sales at the upper end of the Saskatoon real estate market also brought the six-week average higher as it grew three thousand dollars to $339,235 for a year-over-year decline of five thousand dollars. Meanwhile, the four-week median price took another sharp slide to $316,000 for a weekly drop of nine thousand dollars and an annual loss of twenty-one thousand dollars.
One fortunate seller in area three got an early Christmas gift as competing buyers drove the offer price of their home above list price by $5100. A few more reported a sale price that was greater than the asking price but they were all new homes that had been on the market some time and almost certainly included improvements that were not included with the original asking price. Buyers did well at the gestating table this week as 41 of 47 made off with a discount averaging $14,984.
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