The first week of 2011 produced weak sales in the Saskatoon real estate market, as expected. Generally, this week’s completed sales would be a reflection of homes that went under contract during the final week of December when few buyers are actually out making purchase decisions. Over the course of the week twenty-four firm sales were reported to the MLS®, a drop from thirty the week before and just one less than we saw during the same week last year.
New listingscame back with a vengeance following a flood of expired listings at the end of December. Hoping to get a jump on the spring market, 123 Saskatoon home sellers offered a house or a condominium for sale on the multiple listing service®, up from twenty-one last week and considerably higher than the seventy-five homes listed during the first week of 2010.
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The inventory of active residential listing on the Saskatoon MLS® pushed higher by seventy units this week to reach 858, a gain of seventy properties for the week. Inventory levels start the year up nearly 200 units, or close to thirty percent on a year-over-year basis. As of this morning, there are 467 single-family homes and 341 condominiums showing an active status on the MLS®, up from 388 and 235 respectively from the same point in 2010.
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Listing cancellation and withdrawal activity started to increase again as fifteen Saskatoon homes sellers removed their property from the system. Twelve immediately returned sporting a new MLS® number. An additional ten sellers offered a price adjustment on their property.
A good deal of this week’s activity occurred at the upper end of the market so the weekly median spiked higher by roughly thirty-five thousand dollars to reach $315K. The average selling price of a Saskatoon home moved up to $306,983 but the low number of sales included in the average didn’t prevent the six-week average from turning lower. It finished the week at $304,994 losing roughly two thousand dollars compared to last week and gaining just twelve thousand dollars compared to the same week a year ago. The four-week median bounced back to $294,500 to pick up nearly $15K on the week and more than $24K on a year-over-year basis.
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Another soft week on the sales front brought us the first week in a long time without a single overbid sale. One Saskatoon seller managed to get their full asking price while twenty-three of twenty-four sales came in with a sale price below the published list price, by an average of $13,362 or a roughly 3.7% discount off of the asking price.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra
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