Saskatoon real estate week in review: January 4-8 2010

The new year started with a bit of a thud, as Saskatoon home sale numbers continued to look a lot like Christmas. A total of twenty-five houses and condominiums were reported sold by local real estate agents, matching last week’s numbers, but well behind the forty-one homes that traded during the same week last year. It was the first time since the week of September 25that sales were down, year-over-year.

Listing activity picked up from the previous week, but like unit sales, finished well below the levels recorded the previous year. Seventy-five new listings were offered for sale on the Saskatoon MLS system, a huge jump from just thirteen last week, but way below the one hundred and thirty-four homes listed for sale during the first week of 2009. Those single dots at the left hand side of the graphs represent this week's activity. By next week, it we'll have lines again, albeit short ones.

Following twelve consecutive weeks of declines, active listing inventory of Saskatoon homesheaded for higher ground moving from just 619 properties at the close of the previous week to a total of 665, down from 1,188 for the first week of 2009. Single-family homes for sale moved from 353 on January 1 to 388 by today. Condo inventory edged up from 220 to 235 over the course of the past week. Historically, the inventory typically remains fairly steady over the next three to six weeks before it starts to climb again as warmer weather sets in.

The old cancel and re-list game started up again as a total of twelve sellers said goodbye to their assigned MLS number, and nine opted for a new one. Eleven sellers adjusted their asking price, all in a downward direction.

The average selling price of a Saskatoon home continued to show some softness as condos captured a near fifty percent share of sales and buyers above to $500K mark remained absent from the action. The weekly average fell to $258,782, making it one of a half-dozen low points in the past twelve months.  It finished nearly ten thousand dollars lower than last week, and twenty-six thousand dollars below the same week in 2009. The six-week average moved up to $292,932, a gain of just one thousand dollars over the previous week, but nearly twenty-five thousand dollars higher than it was at this time last year. The four-week median fell nearly seven thousand dollars on a week-over-week basis, but continued to show year-over-year gains of roughly ten thousand dollars.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

The average underbid fell again to $8,182; it’s lowest point in months in real dollars. The average discount, as a percentage of the asking price remained steady at 3.1 percent.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra