I’m back in the saddle after an amazing trip to Iceland which involved a trek of 115 kms through mountains, rivers, snow, ice, sand, stone, volcanic rock and dust, and forest. It was amazing! Our group raised over $650,000 for Canadian women’s shelters, so we’re pretty proud of what we accomplished in that beautiful country.
My thanks to Pamela Fisher for looking after the week in review for the two weekends I was away. This is a task that I prefer to do, even when I’m away, but there wasn’t much for internet connections and even if there were, a guy would come off as pretty strange lugging a computer around through the mountains. Again, thanks Pam!
Both Saskatoon real estate sales and new listings exploded this week, at least in comparison to levels recorded over the last two weeks (the numbers for both weeks are a bit suspect and may have been impacted by the implementation of an MLS® upgrade during that time). Local REALTORS® reported 73 firm residential transactions to the MLS®, up from 41 for the previous week. Meanwhile, new listings numbers increased from just 145 last week to 217 for this reporting period.
The inventory of active residential real estate listings on the Saskatoon multiple listing service® moved higher by 28 units this week to reach 2239, the highest levels we’ve seen since numbers peaked at 2251 in mid-June. I recall predicting that week would be our highest level for the year and for a few weeks that appeared to be the case. At this point, we could easily see a new peak over the next couple of weeks. In any case, the number of residential properties available to buyers is now up 195 from where it stood a year ago, a sizeable increase at a time when listings are typically on a slow steady decline. There are now 1262 single-family homes for sale in Saskatoon, up from 1097 a year ago. Available condos have increased from 768 to 867 over the same period of time.
All four price measures that we track made some gains this week with the weekly average and median price inching higher to $358,779 and $338,000 respectively. The six-week average grew just more than a thousand dollars from last week to reach $347,344. That’s down a bit more than 15K from levels recorded at the close of this week last year. The four-week median price took a bigger jump to $334,900 which is up 10K from last week, and down 10K on an annual basis.
No overbid offers were recorded this week, though eight sellers did capture an offer at their asking price. On the other hand, 65 of this week’s 73 sales were reported to have sold below the seller’s asking price netting the buyers an average discount of $14,349.
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