Saskatoon real estate week in review: April 5-9 2010
The Saskatoon real estate market once again performed in a lackluster fashion as agents reported just sixty-seven house and condo sales for the week, ahead of last week by two, and beating the same week in 2009 by just three. Following a comparatively strong performance in March, sales for the first full month of spring are lagging behind those recorded last April, which you may recall was nothing to write home about. Mind you, lots of month remains and the tide can certainly change but popular opinion had predicted strong sales leading up to the April 19 deadline when new mortgage rules take effect. That doesn’t seem to be happening.
While buyers may have taken a bit of a breather, sellers certainly didn’t. New listings reached their highest level for any week this year at one hundred and sixty-six homes, up on the previous week by twenty-four and ahead of the same week last year by seventeen. Houses once again accounted for the bulk of the activity with one hundred and nineteen units listed while forty-seven condos were offered for sale.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
The inventory of active MLS listings in Saskatoon took its steepest step up this year gaining seventy-three properties on a week-over-week basis to close the week at 1127 units. Total residential inventory is still sitting well below last year’s number of 1451. Available single-family homes surged forward moving from 630 last week to 675 by the weekend. Condos picked up nearly two-dozen units compared to last week and finished with 397 properties offered for sale. At this time last year there were 890 detached houses and 475 condominiums showing an active status on the Saskatoon MLS system.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
Cancelled and withdrawn listings came in at just twenty-five with a dozen of those returning to the inventory masquerading as a new listing. Forty-two sellers adjusted their asking price with all but two going lower. One seller, after 175 days on the market raised the asking price by roughly seven percent, an interesting approach to say the least.
A healthy share of home sales above the $500,000 mark pushed the average selling price of a Saskatoon home back towards the annual peak to reach $303,131 and recorded an increase on almost twenty thousand dollars from last week. The six-week average was up nearly four thousand to $286,172 and saw a gain of more than seventeen thousand dollars over the same week last year when it was close to its annual low. The four-week median also moved higher gaining roughly three thousand dollars from last week and nearly seventeen thousand dollars on a year-over-year basis to close at $276,750.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
Immediately on the heels of a week that produced the highest number of overbids this year, paying more than list price suddenly became un-cool and only two Saskatoon home sellers managed an over list sale price. The average overbid plummeted just as sharply falling from $7,743 last week to $1,132. Eight sellers managed to close a deal at the asking price while fifty-seven of the sixty-seven completed transactions finished below list price by an average of $7,565, a discount of roughly 2.5% off the asking price.
Click the image for a larger version of the chart.
Highlights from the news this week
How the market will fix MLS rules
Saskatoon real estate market sees steady growth
Why now is the time to prepare for higher interest rates
The great sucking sound of Ottawa’s housing focus
Should I be concerned about new mortgage rules?
When housing boom meet rate-hike panic
MLS rival joins battle against Competition Bureau
Housing market overheating: Royal LePage
Competition chief ends talks with CREA
Competition Commissioner fires back at CREA
Affordable housing in demand, prices increase
Subprime prime alive here
A map displaying the boundaries of Saskatoon real estate areas is here.
An overview of data collection and calculation practices for our statistical reports is here.
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.
Real estate geeks can follow our daily updates on Twitter @norm_fisher.
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Saskatoon Real Estate
There's 9 Comments So Far
April 11th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Fisher, in calculating the 6-week or 4-week mean or median, do you count the number of sales, ie, the mean/median of prices of all sles in the past 4 or 6 weeks, in comparison to the simple average/median of the average prices in the past 4 or 6 weeks? Are you using the former or the latter?
April 11th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Good question Raymond,
The former. Both numbers are based on the total number of sales over the given period of time.
April 12th, 2010 at 12:07 am
Black line won’t cross the blue line this in residential listings this year. Should bold well for us renters looking to buy in the future
April 12th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
That’s pretty bearish! If we exceed 1,800 listings this year I think all bets are off in terms of how much housing is going to take a hit (easily 10-20%, though).
April 13th, 2010 at 9:25 am
Last year housing starts fell off the map while this year starts are cranked back up. Willowgroves last lot draw had three guys line up for a whole day at the land branch for the last lots. Add rosewood, hampton and stonebbridge warman and martinsville areas ,there is a lot of supply coming in the next while. As for demand, all the big banks expect prime to be at or near 5% next year. If you believe in a recovery rates are going up. New mortgage rules, debt levels and eventually exhaustion of future demand brought forward will slow demand.
April 13th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
“New mortgage rules, debt levels and eventually exhaustion of future demand brought forward will slow demand.”
Good points.
“Last year housing starts fell off the map while this year starts are cranked back up.”
I’m thinking 280 starts for “the region” isn’t exactly cranked up given that we are we’re already at mid-April. It looks like a lot of homes compared to last year but builders were starving to death at this time in 2009. A fair number of these new builds will have already been absorbed. This market is not heavy on speculation right now. At least that’s my impression.
April 13th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Looks like bubble head is right about rates going up. RBC hikes mortgage rates 25 basis points. 5 year closed rate is now at 6.10%.
http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/financials/story.html?id=2901557
April 13th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
There’s a lot of condos and townhouses under construction (and now River Landing). It will be interesting to see how many of these projects survive intact until completion.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Doug, 8% is the historical average.