Saskatoon real estate week in review–Oct. 5-9 2009

Unit sales of houses and condos in the Saskatoon real estate market continued in the zig-zag pattern of one up, one down that we’ve been seeing over the past eight weeks. This was a down week with total sales reported in the house and condo categories slipping to sixty-two, off by twenty-three properties compared to last week, but still managing to beat sales numbers for the same week last yearwhen just forty-nine Saskatoon homes changed hands. Clearly, the trend is towards fewer units trading and as the weather gets cooler, this is a trend that we should expect to see continue as it does historically, until unit sales bottom out in December.

New listings of Saskatoon houses and condominiums were up just two properties on a week-over-week basis to one hundred and six, but well below the one hundred and fifty-one properties listed during the same period in 2008.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

Active listings in the residential category grew slightly and finished the week at one thousand and forty units, up eleven properties from the previous week, but well below the sixteen hundred and eighty-eight properties available at this time last year. The trend towards lower inventory levels certainly has slowed. The number of Saskatoon homes for salefell by nearly five hundred properties over June, July and August. We’re only down about forty units in the past five weeks.

Thirty-seven home sellers canceled or withdrew listings this past week. Twenty of those quickly changed their minds and signed a new listing agreement. An additional sixty-one sellers adjusted their asking price in hopes of attracting a buyer before the city freezes up.

The average selling price of a Saskatoon home climbed again for the third consecutive week reaching $292,637. The six-week average moved in the same direction but grew far more modestly climbing to $285,295, a gain of about nineteen hundred dollars over last week, but well below the $301,380 recorded during the same week in 2008. A nineteen thousand dollar week-over-week tumble for the weekly median sale price pushed the four-week median in the opposite direction to just $263,000, its lowest level since the week of April 24, and just sixty-five hundred dollars behind last year’s number of $269,500.

Click the image for a larger version of the graph.

The average underbid on the Saskatoon homes that sold for less than the asking price grew from $9,236 last week to $10,626, but the higher asking prices this week meant that the average discount actually fell from 3.1% last week to 3% this week.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra