Saskatoon real estate: Week in review (March 30–April 3, 2009)

Saskatoon real estate agents added one hundred and forty homes to the MLS database this week including eighty-five single-family detached houses and fifty-five condominiums. New listing activity increased by twenty-seven units compared to the previous week, but total numbers continued to lag behind those seen last yearwhen one hundred and eighty-five homes were offered for sale. Total active listings slid to 1,399 units by the close of business Friday when eight hundred and fifty-nine houses and four hundred and fifty-three condos showed an active status on the Saskatoon MLS.

Home sales increased again for the third week in a row as seventy-four firm deals on Saskatoon houses and condos were reported, up about sixteen perfect from sixty-four properties last week, and down roughly twenty percent from the ninety-two homes sold during the same week in 2008. Two of last year’s weaker spring sales weeks lie directly ahead of us bringing some hope that an “up over last year” week for unit sales may actually be realistic and attainable.

On the surface there isn’t much apparent change on our price history graph as the numbers held fairly steady in each of the three pricing categories. This is somewhat remarkable given that two large sales are included in the mix this week, with a combined value of $2,130,000. When just two sales account for ten percent of the week’s total sales volume one might expect to see a bit of a spike on the graph, but these extraordinary sales simply kept us steady as one-third of all residential sales occurred below the $200K mark this week. The weekly average sale price came in at $273,638, down from $275,978 last week. The six-week average dipped to $267,001 from $268,575 the week before and substantially widened its year-over-year decline to nearly twenty two thousand dollars. The four-week median managed a bump to $260,000, up one thousand dollars from last week, and down twenty thousand dollars from the same week in 2008.

The average underbid remained steady compared to the previous week ($11,907 to $12,180 or 4.3 percent of asking price), but the overall look of the graph did change as the transactions closed within ten-thousand dollars of the asking price (seventy-two percent) took the largest share we’ve seen since we started to track these numbers. Naturally, all four of the higher discount categories took a decline.

Interestingly, six of seventy-four sales this week did report a sale price, which exceeded the asking price by an average of $2,250. That’s the highest number of overbid home sales and the largest percentage recorded since the week of July 14-18of 2008 when seven of seventy-one unit sales sold above their asking price.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra