Saskatoon real estate week in review - August 24-28 2009

Saskatoon real estate sales took a rather significant turn this week, falling to their lowest level since early May with just sixty-five homes sold, down from an exceptionally strong number of one hundred and fourteen the week before. Unit sales still managed to come in a higher than the same week last year when only fifty-three homes changed hands. On a brighter note, the week came to a close with three hundred and sixty firm residential sales reported for August, up from two hundred and fifty-four for August 2008, and well above the five-year August average of three hundred and seventeen Saskatoon homes sold. With just one more reporting day in August, it seems doubtful that we’ll see the same record breaking performance that we saw in Julybut we will almost certainly come close to our peak sale levels of 397 homes sold in August 2007.

New Saskatoon MLS listings also took a bit of a dip, though not nearly as dramatically as the slide in unit sales. Agents offered ninety-one houses and condos for sale, ten fewer than last week, and down thirty properties when compared to the same week last year.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

Total active residential listings managed to fall slightly finishing the week at 1152, down just thirteen from last week, but well off of last year’s 1676 homes. Single-family home stock remained steady at six hundred and seventy-six while condominium inventory picked up five properties to finish at three hundred and eighty-five. Losses in other categories (duplexes, semis, etc.) brought the marginal overall decline.

In prices, forty-seven price changes were recorded over the course of the week. An additional twenty-two Saskatoon home sellers pulled the old, “I’m out, no, I’m in” trick by canceling an existing listing and bringing the home back on with a new MLS number.

Prices softened slightly by all three measures this week with the overall average sliding just over thirty-five hundred dollars to $278,932. The six-week average slipped less than a thousand dollars, remaining just twenty-three hundred dollars lower than it was for the same week last year. The four-week median price slipped fifty-five hundred dollars to end at $274,500, about five thousand dollars below last year’s number.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

The average underbid on Saskatoon homes that sold for less than the asking price fell again to $8,609, down just about a thousand dollars compared to last week when it was $9,605. That’s a discount of just 2.5%, nearly half of what we were seeing just a few weeks ago.

Seventy seven percent of sellers who took a deal below their asking price managed to close without dropping more than ten thousand dollars.

Overbid sales nearly disappeared with just two buyers offering to pay more than the asking price (one just barely), compared to eleven the week before.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra