The number of homes sold reached its highest point for any week this year as Saskatoon real estate agents reported 90 firm deals to the multiple listing service®, well up from 75 for the previous week, and topping sales for the same period last year by two units.
Meanwhile, the number of new residential listings added to the MLS® fell sharply to just 155. That’s 19 fewer Saskatoon homes than we saw listed last week, down 40 when compared to the number of new listings added to the system during the same week last year.
Strong sales and weaker new listing activity kept MLS inventory in check this week. As of this morning, there are 1801 active Saskatoon real estate listings in the residential category, up just three from last week’s close, and well down from 2029 at this time last year. That’s an 11 percent annual drop, the largest we’ve seen since listing inventory began to show year-over-year declines. Most of those losses are still counted in the single-family home category. Today there are 941 detached houses listed for sale on the Saskatoon MLS. That’s down nine from last week, a drop of 128 from a year ago. Condominium inventory is at 769 today, up 14 from last week’s close, and down eight on an annual basis.
Fewer high-end homes in the mix brought both the weekly median price and the weekly average lower this week to $311,000 and $327,572 respectively. The six-week average price edged lower to $333,526. That’s down about four thousand dollars from last week, an annual drop of nearly 21K. Last year at this time, that measure was beginning an upward spike that went on for five consecutive weeks until it reached its peak for the year. The four-week median price came in at $320,000, about where it’s been for four weeks time. It’s down twenty thousand dollars when compared against numbers recorded at the close of the same week in 2017.
Two homes were reported sold this week at a price that exceeded the list price, one at $100 over, the other paying a bonus of $2100. This week, 80 of 90 sales went below the asking price netting buyers an average discount of $12,600.
Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that those sales that do show a sale price that is greater than the list price are all new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. We report these to you as “at list price sales”, which is likely too generous in some cases, but it’s simply not practical to obtain the full details of each sale.
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