Saskatoon real estate agents had another busy week. A total of 96 residential properties were reported sold throughout the week for a weekly increase of just one home. On a year-over-year basis, sales declined slightly from the 102 deals recorded during the same week a year ago. New listings, on the other hand increased significantly as they grew to 251, up from 200 last week producing the second highest volume week this year.
You may recall that last week, the total number of residential properties available for sale on the Saskatoon multiple listing service® saw its first stall in a long while growing by just four over the week. Reflecting back, that happened because it was month end and a number of listings had expired from the MLS® system as April came to a close. Many of those properties came back on the market this week resulting in a much bigger increase to listing numbers. We closed business yesterday with totals reaching 1964 Saskatoon homes, up nearly 60 from a week ago, for an annual gain of 424 homes. Condos show the larger percentage gain as they climb from 455 a year ago to 682 today for an annual increase of 41 percent. Single-family homes closed the week sitting at 1097 available listings, up 26 percent annually from 871 at this time last year.
With about 15 percent of weekly sales coming in above the $500,000 mark both the weekly average and the median price of a Saskatoon home saw big gains moving to $373,986 and $364,500 respectively. The longer term measures both continued to show growth as the 4-week median climbed for the fourth week in a row, and the six-week average made its fifth consecutive weekly gain. The former grew to $344,950 to claim a weekly increase of about two thousand dollars to find itself up by about three thousand dollars annually. The six-week average added nearly four thousand dollars from last week to close at $353,078 finishing down about $1700 from where it sat a year ago. Eight weeks ago the six-week average starting showing annual losses. While still down annually, his is the smallest year-over-year decrease since that time. Clearly, the spring real estate market has arrived and seller’s positions seem to have strengthened some, in spite of high inventory numbers. I don’t expect that we’ll see big year-over-year gains in the short term but annual losses appear to be in the rear view mirror for now. Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
This week, seven eager buyers paid more than the asking price. A weekly average overbid of nearly 40K warranted further investigation which revealed that a number of the overbid sales were on new homes that had been around for awhile suggesting that additional improvements not anticipated in the listing price were likely added at sale time. on the opposite side of the negotiating table, 85b buyers ground themselves a deal with an average discount of $11,318 while another four stepped up and paid full price to close their deal. Click the image for a larger version of the chart.
Other notable real estate activity this past week included 94 cancelled and withdrawn listings (87 and seven respectively), 24 expired listings and 89 price changes.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra