After four weeks of triple-digit sales, and a new unit sales record for the 2022 year, Saskatoon home sales took a dive falling 43 units from last week to just 98, for an annual decline of 15 sales.
The new listing activity also slipped lower falling to 158 for a weekly loss of 19 listings and a year-over-year decline of 67.
Wow!
Why the sharp drop in new listing activity from last year? Here’s my best guess.
You’ve heard of “pent-up demand.” That phrase is typically used to describe a glut of home buyers who were sidelined from entering the market for any reason. In this market, I think we had some pent-up desire to sell that had been curbed by market changes. We saw that get released over the past year.
After reaching a new peak in 2014, Saskatoon home prices began to decline in 2015. Over the next few years, they fell quite a bit and continued to do so until they began to level off in late 2019. Falling prices trapped people who might have otherwise sold sooner, except that they were in a negative equity position. As prices began to rise, many of those homes were put on the market, with the largest portion of them coming back in 2021. While there are some apartment condos still well underwater, for the most part, much of that inventory has now been sold.
With far fewer homes being offered for sale this year, the inventory of available MLS® listings in Saskatoon is struggling to make gains. In fact, we’ve seen declines over the past two weeks, albeit modest. This is, however, a time of year that we expect big gains, so it’s a frustrating situation for everyone, except perhaps, home sellers.
This week, the inventory fell by just one unit to 986, way down from 1306 (a 35 percent drop) at this time last year.
In the mix today, there are 477 single-family homes for sale in Saskatoon, down ten from last and lower annually by 118 units. Condo inventory is at 436 today, up by five from last week’s close, but down by 207 units from where we stood a year ago.
30-day sales grew again but at a more modest pace. In fact, they grew by just two units from last week to 494.
“Months of inventory” was unchanged from last week in all three categories we watch.
All residential - 986 active listings / 494 sales = 2.0 month supply (the same as last week).
Single-family homes - 477 listings / 289 sales = 1.7 month supply (same as last week).
Condos - 436 listings / 1723 sales = 2.5 month supply. (same as last week).
There was just slightly more activity in the lower-priced half of the market this week which brought the median sale price and the average sale price for the week lower to $363,950 and $372,889 respectively.
The six-week average price reached a new high for the year for the second week in a row. It finished the week up by roughly $4,500 and reached $369,923, for an annual increase that came close to matching the weekly gain.
The four-week median price grew for the third consecutive week, and also reached a new high for this year at $361,000. That’s higher than it was last week by six grand and $9,250 annually.
Overbid sales grew to 29, which is, without any doubt, the highest percentage of sales to go for more than the seller’s asking price for any week this year. On average, those homes attracted an offer that was $15,293 above the listed price. Meanwhile, 55 deals closed below the asking price with an average discount amounting to $9,866.
Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales. Please note that this chart may show over-list price sales, even when I have reported the number as 0. Those sales are typically new properties that spent some period of time on the market, and most likely sold and included additional improvements that were not reflected in the original list price. For example, a new home listed at $450,000 sells at a price of $490,000 after 120 days on the market may have included a basement development that was not anticipated in the listing 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. A description of the geographic boundaries of areas 1 through 5 is here.
More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra
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