Saskatoon real estate week in review: January 11-15 2010

Saskatoon home sales continued to move at a slower than expected pace this week as real estate agents reported firm sales on just forty single-family homes and condominiums. Forty sales marks a notable increase from last week when just twenty-five homes sold, but it leaves us down on a year-over-year basis for the second consecutive week following a long string of weekly increases. During the same week last yearSaskatoon real estate agents reported forty-eight sales for the same period.

New listings, on the other hand, picked up a bit of steam and increased to eighty-seven properties, up from seventy-five last week, but still down compared to the same week last year when ninety-three Saskatoon homes were offered for sale on the multiple listing service.

With new listings more than doubling our sales volume active listings pushed higher again to reach 695 units, up from 665 last week, and well above the year end low of 619 properties. Year-over-year, total active residential listings remain sharply lower than the 1191 units which were available at this time last year.

On a week-over week basis, the inventory of single-family homes remained steady at 388, while condo inventory pushed higher from 235 units to 259. The remaining gains to the inventory were mostly seen in duplexes and semi-detached homes.

The average selling price of a Saskatoon home moved lower for the third consecutive week, falling roughly nine thousand dollars from last week to $249,861. The six-week average saw similar movement in the same downward direction to finish the week at $283,509, about thirteen thousand dollars higher than it was for the same period last year. The four-week median tumbled the hardest falling seventeen thousand dollars on a week-over-week basis to just $252,850, lower than the same week in 2009 by a little better than twelve thousand dollars.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

The average underbid gained about six hundred dollars compared to last week but still fell short of the ten thousand dollar mark at $9,628. Lower list and sale prices saw the average discount rise to 3.7%, up from 3.1% last week.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra