For the fourth consecutive week, the Saskatoon real estate market has recorded firm sales that met or beat the numbers for the same week in 2015. Over the past seven days, local REALTORS® firmed up 93 residential deals. That’s an increase of nine from last week, and up four from the same period last year. To be clear, these are not huge gains but during a year that has shown declines in sales in all of the first seven months of the year, it might be a bit encouraging for some sellers to see August close up on last year. So far this month, local agents have reported 318 deals. Last year, the total for all of August was 329. It’s a win and we’ll take it.
At the same time, the number of new listings that were added to the MLS® system plummeted to just 160, down from 212 for the same period last year.
For the second consecutive week, the total number of active residential listings on the multiple service® came in below levels recorded a year ago. Again, the difference isn’t large, but given that we have seen consistent annual gains for roughly 165 weeks, it’s a welcome change. Today there are 2048 residential listings showing an active status on the MLS®. That’s down just four from last week, and 11 fewer than were available a year ago. With just over 100 listings set to expire in the next few days, next week will most likely show some larger drops.
Taking a closer look by housing category, there are 1107 single-family homes available to local buyers, well below the 1210 houses that were up for sale last year at this time. Condo inventory made some small gains this week as the inventory grew to 770 and closed well up from 688 a year ago.
There were strong sales towards the upper end of the Saskatoon real estate market this week. With 14 sales recording prices at or above $500,000 the average price paid for a Saskatoon home grew to $362,599. There was a lot going on in the $200,000 to $300,000 range as well, enough to bring the weekly median price down sharply to $298,350. That’s just the second time this year that the median fell below $300K. At the same time, the longer-term measures both inched lower, perhaps telegraphing a similar trend to last year when prices began to slip lower in late August. In 2015, that continued through September and October which ultimately recorded some of the lower prices for the year. The six-week average price slipped to $358,391 to record an annual increase of just over one thousand dollars while the four-week median price slipped to $338,000 to show an annual loss of just more than ten thousand dollars.
After a couple of weeks with no overbid sales, three sellers found themselves accepting offers above their asking price. Those deals paid an average bonus of $1100. Meanwhile, 83 buyers made off with a discount averaging $10,629 while six buyers and sellers agreed to deal at the listed price.
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
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