Saskatoon home sales reached their highest level for any week this year as local real estate agents reported 78 firm house and condo transactions to the multiple listings service®, up 13 from last week but nearly 20 units short of sales numbers recorded during the same week last year. Of course, year-over-year sales declines have been pretty consistent so far this year. As February closed, the Saskatoon real estate market (MLS® residential sales) was down 18% from last year. Ouch!
New listings also increased on a weekly basis. This week saw 120 new listings hit the system, up from 112 last week but far below the 164 Saskatoon homes that came on during the same period last year.
A whack of property offerings that expired at the end of February brought total MLS® listings in the residential category below 1,000 units to 976 this morning, just 14 fewer than were available at the close of the same week in 2011. A more honest comparison, based on “months of available inventory” shows Saskatoon having a near four month supply of residential properties. That’s nearly a full month more than what existed a year ago. Once again, single-family home inventory climbed slightly on an annual basis to close the week at 599, up from 577 a year ago. Condo inventory finished lower slipping to just 293 properties from 327 last year.
A stronger week for luxury home sales, including three single-family homes averaging close to $1.1 million each brought the average price of a Saskatoon home higher by almost forty thousand dollars this week to $341,264. The median price edged up as well, just by $10K and reached $310,000. The six-week average price moved ahead by three thousand dollars to $333,086 and closed the week about fourteen thousand dollars ahead of last year. Meanwhile, the four-week median price tumbled more than fifteen thousand dollars to its lowest point this year to finish at $306,250 for a year-over-year loss of just over ten thousand dollars. This would be the first time we’ve seen a year-over-year decline to the four-week median price since December of 2011.
This week’s activity saw two buyers overbidding to close a deal on their dream home. Those contacts netted the seller an extra $50,000 in one instance and an additional $5,000 on the other. Another 12 buyers made a full price offer while 64 of this week’s 78 sales came in below the asking price with an average discount of $8,065.
Other notable MLS® activity this week included 38 cancelled and withdrawn listings, 51 expired listings and 18 price adjustments.
Highlights from the news this past week
Baby boomers won’t downsize anytime soon: Royal LePage - TeamFisher.com
Cooling in housing market seen as healthy - Globe and Mail
CMHC seeking to hide foreclosure information from buyers - Financial Post
Suburban model unsustainable - Star Phoenix
Canadian home costs take smaller bite of household budget... - Financial Post
Nearly half of baby boomers don’t plan to downsize - Globe and Mail
‘We don’t want low-ball offers’: CMHC - Financial Post
A map displaying the boundaries of Saskatoon real estate areas is here.
An overview of data collection and calculation practices for our statistical reports is here.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra
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