They say all good things must come to an end. 

Last week, I reported to you that we had just been through our 14th consecutive week of annual sales gains. This week, sales fell sharply to just 75, which is down 52 units from the previous week, and just enough to match sales for the same week last year. It’s not unusual to see sales declines during short work weeks, but there were other factors that suggested a general cooling to the market. 

New listings also fell lower this week as just 174 Saskatoon home sellers offered their home for sale on the multiple listing service®. That’s down by 13 from last week and ten fewer homes than were offered for sale over the same period last year.

Weakening sales activity, and a continuing flow of new listings made way for active listing inventory to grow by 22 units this week to 1517. Most years, the total number of active listings will peak at the end of June and then fall steadily lower for the balance of the year. Nothing is normal about this year, and inventory, as low as it has been, has hardly budged from that 1500-1600 range since it got there at the end of May.

Today, the MLS® system shows 845 detached houses with an “active” status. That’s well down from 1168 a year ago. We also have 583 condos, down from 647 at this time last year.

With 30-day sales falling to 450, a decline of 37 from last week, the “months of inventory” measure grew from 3 months to 3.4 months. That’s a sharp change in one week but this is the time of the year where we can typically expect conditions to improve for buyers, as seasonal demand begins to drop.

The weekly median price of a Saskatoon home edged up just a few thousand dollars to $340,000 this week, in spite of the fact that sales above $500K grew this week. This cluster of activity at the market’s upper end did manage to push the average price for the week about 40K higher to $378,033.

The six-week average price declined by a few hundred dollars but remained near record highs for the year. It closed the week at $356,699 to take an annual gain of twenty-six thousand dollars. The four-week median price grew by nearly four thousand dollars from last week to $339,950. That’s $25,000 higher than it was at this time last year.

The number of sellers to receive an offer above their asking price plummeted from 12 last week to just three, and those overbids were nothing to write home about. There were two at just $100 and one at $2100 for an average of just over $700. Meanwhile, the average discount that buyers negotiated was on the high side at $14.066.

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.

More weekly stats and numbers for those who love them. 

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Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra