Saskatoon real estate agents reported a total of sixty-three single-family home and condominium sales to the local MLS system, an increase of eighteen properties over last week and a gain of seventeen when compared to the same week last year. Each of the previous few weeks recorded year-over-year declines in unit sales for the Saskatoon area.
New listings in the same categories plummeted dropping by more than half of the previous week’s volume to finish roughly thirty percent behind the same week in 2009 as just fifty-eight homes were offered for sale.
After three consecutive weeks of gains that saw total active residential listings climb by about one hundred and thirty properties, inventory levels softened slightly and slipped to 734 homes. That number is down from 751 last week, and well off of the 1,134 homes available at this time last year, but still more than double the number of homes for sale at this time in 2008 when levels reached historical lows for the month of January. There are currently 412 single-family homes for sale and 281 condos, down from 416 and 290 respectively at the close of the previous week.
In single-family homes, inventory remains tightest in the $200,000-$300,000 range where you’ll find a total of eighty-six houses showing a for sale sign. With January sales at forty-six units, there’s a little less than a two-month supply. Conversely, house buyers have some serious options above the $400,000 mark with just nineteen sales in January and 180 properties available.
In Saskatoon condominiums, you’ll see similar supply trends in the same price ranges. Between 200K and 300K, we see twenty-seven January sales compared to eighty-one active listings. Above $400,000 there is a selection of forty-three units but not single sale recorded during the month of January.
Just seven MLS® listings were cancelled or withdrawn from the multiple listing service this week and not one of them returned disguised as a new listing. An additional sixteen home sellers adjusted their asking price, with all but three moving lower.
After reaching their lowest point in nearly a year average sale prices continued to push up for the second consecutive week reaching levels more typical of the Q3/2009 action. In spite of the upward direction that the average took the year-over-year gains that we’ve been seeing over the past seven weeks vanished. The average sale prices for Saskatoon houses and condos hit $290,133 this week, a gain of nearly $20,000 over the previous week but pretty much level with the same week in 2009. The six-week average managed to slip about a thousand dollars on a week-over-week basis but remained about two thousand dollars higher than it was last year at this time. The four-week median climbed two thousand dollars from last week but finished lower than the same week last year by six thousand dollars.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
The average underbid jumped back from the low $7,341 of last week to $11,280. Buyers who managed to negotiate a discount off of the asking price saw an average price drop of 3.6%, up from the unusually low 2.4% recorded last week.
Four sellers managed to wrap up a deal above the asking price with the average sale recorded at $3,550 above list.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra