Just 16 shopping days until Christmas folks! If you’re celebrating, we hope that you have a good headstart on wrapping up this fun task.
Speaking of wrapping up, we are well into the home stretch for 2018 Saskatoon real estate activity. Just three more weekly reviews after this one before the dust settles and we know what it looks like. The early evidence suggests that we’ll fall short of last year’s unit sale numbers by three to four percent. Last year, 3,518 Saskatoon homes were reported sold through the MLS®. As of the close of business Friday, we were sitting at 3,230.
This past week saw 51 residential sales processed through the multiple listing service®, up two from the week before, but down by 16 sales when compared against the same period last year.
New listings came on pretty strong at 114 for a weekly increase of two dozen homes, up on the same week a year ago by five. It was a big week for failed listings with 138 expiries. That helped to drive new listings higher as those most wanting a sale brought their home back to the system for another go.
For those determined to buy, December is often the month in which seller motivation is highest. The number of home showings a typical seller receives will begin to wane and days of nothingness can soon drive a seller crazy. I’m a guy who’s loathe to ever proclaim, “Now is a great time to buy!” but if I was looking to do so in the next 90-120 days, I’d probably try to take advantage of the more favourable conditions buyers often find in December.
Sales
MLS inventory slipped and reached its lowest point since March, and its four year low point for this particular week. Today, there are 1603 active residential listings on the system, lower than last week’s close by 28, and down by 137 from a year ago. Today’s totals show 896 single-family homes for sale in Saskatoon. That’s down from 968 a year ago. Condo inventory is at 603 today, down about 52 units from 12 months ago.
Actives
As I’ve said many times, prices can and do get all over the map when you’re average sales are so low. The Home Price Index numbers in our recent monthly post are far more reliable, but hey, we do this every week and nothing’s gonna stop us now, right?
So, with that disclaimer in the bag, here’s what the week looked like.
Upper end activity was strong enough to push the weekly median sale price higher by nearly five thousand dollars. It closed the week at $329,900. Still, with very little activity above the $500K mark, the average sale price for the week tumbled lower by close to $40,000 to make a rare appearance below the three hundred thousand dollar mark at $299,900. The six-week average price fell more than six thousand dollars from a week earlier and settled at $334,274. That’s roughly eleven thousand dollars lower than it was for the same week last year. The four-week median price managed some gains as at grew by about fifteen hundred dollars from last week and reached $328,950 for an annual increase of nearly nine thousand dollars.
Price
For the fourth consecutive week, just one Saskatoon home seller wrapped up an offer above their asking price. In this case, the offer came in at $100 more than they had asked for the home. Meanwhile, 46 of this week’s 51 sales required some give on the seller side. Those buyers saw an average discount of $14,094.
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.
List
More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them.
General
Thank-you for reading TeamFisher’s Saskatoon Real Estate Week in Review.
I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions. Please feel free to call or text me at 306-241-6676 or reach me by email at norm at teamfisher dot com.
Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra
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