Saskatoon real estate week in review: January 7-13, 2018

The Saskatoon real estate market continued at a sluggish pace through the past week during which just 32 firm residential sales were reported to the multiple listing service®. While that’s four deals more than we saw the previous week, it’s a ten unit drop when compared to the same period of 2017, and the second year-over-year decline in as many weeks. A soft start, but one shouldn’t read much into these weeks when activity is simply weak. 32. 42. Weak.

New listings continued to make rapid headway as 156 residential properties were added to the system over the past seven days. That’s nearly 40 more than we saw enter the market during the previous week, and twelve fewer than were listed during the same week last year.

The number of Saskatoon homes for sale on the local MLS® grew by 52 from last week’s close finishing the week at 1522, which is down from 1570 a year ago. This is the second consecutive week in which active listing inventory fell from a year earlier, notable only because this has been a rare occurrence over the past two and a half years. Inventory numbers are at their lowest point for this particular week since 2015, and overall at their second lowest point since the closing week of 2015 (they were lower last week), but again, there are many weeks of growth to the MLS® database ahead of us this year and not much should be drawn from these numbers. Today, there are 817 detached houses (single-family homes) available to Saskatoon home buyers, down from 827 a year ago. Condo inventory saw the greatest growth this week as the total number available moved higher to 607 units, up just two annually.

With 25 percent of the week’s sales activity occurring in the over $500,000 price range, both the weekly average price and the median price took some solid gains to $381,665 and $371,500 respectively. The six-week average price grew by eight thousand dollars compared to last week to close this period at $343,719. That amounts to an annual gain of more than five thousand dollars. The four-week median price grew by a whopping seventeen thousand dollars from a week earlier to $335,000 and reached its highest point since September. This is also the first week in ten that the measure has been up from a year earlier. At the close of the second week of January last year, the four-week median price was lower than it is was this week by six thousand dollars.

One fortunate seller with a beautifully renovated home in area four found themselves looking at multiple offers that drove their closing price above the list price. A couple of others got what they were asking, while 29 of the week’s 32 sales required some give on the seller’s part. Those deals closed at an average discount of $17,049 with a handful of pretty big drops in the mix.

Here is a breakdown of what the sales to listing price ratio looked like on this week’s sales.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  All of my contact info is here. Please feel free to call or email.

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra