Saskatoon real estate week in review: October 25-29 2010

Saskatoon real estate agents reported firm sales on fifty-six houses and condominiums this week, thirteen fewer than were reported to the multiple listing service during the previous weekand well below the eighty-three homes that sold during the same week last year. As the week drew to a close, so did the month of October. With the last opportunity to report MLS sales for October of 2010 behind us, the month closed with a total of 262 residential sales, fifteen percent below last year’s total of 309 units, but just slightly below the five-year average for October of 269 properties.

New listings remained steady at eighty-five on a week-over-week basis but took a good jump when compared against the same period in 2009 when just sixty-three sellers offered their Saskatoon homes for sale.

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The inventory of active residential MLS listings continued to slide for a seventh consecutive week as the total number of listings slipped fifteen to 1210 but remained stubbornly higher than last year at this time when just 943 properties were for sale. As of today, there are 734 single-family homes and 414 condominiums showing an active status on the Saskatoon MLS system. Last week at this time those numbers sat at 739 and 421 respectively. Compare those stats to 552 and 321 at the same point in 2009. In the next two days, sixty-one MLS listings are due to expire. I expect a small handful of those will be extended before the deadline hits but total inventory numbers should fall well below 1200 before business at the real estate board resumes on Monday morning.

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Cancelled and withdrawn listings fell off again to just thirty-three listings. Eighteen of those re-entered the system disguised as a “new listing,” most at a lower price. An additional forty-eight price adjustments were processed on houses and condos this week.

While this week’s sales included a broad range of prices and a median sale price well towards the lower end of the range in recent months ($277,250), a couple of high-end sales worth more than $1.6 million dollars combined pushed the average selling price of a Saskatoon home higher again to $305,451. The six-week average price managed to move in a downward direction for the fifth week in a row to settle lower by just six hundred dollars compared to last week, and twenty-five thousand dollars higher than it was at the close of the same week last year. The four-week median price also fell lower losing nine thousand dollars on the week to settle at $281,000, recording a gain of seventeen thousand dollars on the same week in 2009.

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While there was four overbid sales reported this week, three of them were new homes that likely included some additional improvements to bring the price up by an average of $14,350. Three sellers managed a deal at their full asking price while forty-nine of fifty-six home buyers negotiated a below list price with an average discount of $10,501 or 3.4%.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra