Homes sales remained steady this week with Saskatoon real estate agents reporting forty-six sales of single-family detached homes and condominiums, down just one from last week, and up from thirty-four compared to the same week last year.
New listings slid, falling ten units from last week, and five from the same week in 2008 as just fifty-seven homes were added to the Saskatoon MLS system.
Saskatoon MLS listings (all residential) fell again, but more significantly than we’ve seen in recent weeks as nearly five percent of the active listings expired at the end of November pushing the total inventory to just eight hundred and seventeen units, its lowest level since the last week of April 2008. As of this morning, there are just four hundred and eighty-four detached houses and two hundred and eighty-two condominiums showing an active status on the multiple listing service. Active single-family home listings are down forty-four percent from the same week last year when eight hundred and sixty-two houses were offered for sale. Active condo listings are down forty-one percent, year-over-year. At this time in 2008 there were four hundred and sixty-three condos for sale in Saskatoon.
Cancelled and withdrawn listings came in at thirty-one, and eighteen of those properties were immediately brought back in as a new listing. Just nineteen sellers adjusted their asking price this week.
It was a week of extremes when it comes to Saskatoon home prices. Buoyed by a number of upper end sales including three at a half-million or higher the average selling price for the week came in exceptionally strong at $303,211. Interestingly, prices have only broke the $300K barrier a half dozen times this year, with four of those occurrences happening in a ninety day window from the second week of September until now. The six-week average gained over five thousand dollars on the previous week to finish at $277,893 about six thousand dollars lower than the same week in 2008. The four-week median soared gaining over nineteen thousand dollars on the week to $282,328, a gain of more than twelve thousand dollars on the same week last year.
Click the image for a larger version of the graph.
The average underbid on Saskatoon homes that sold for less than the asking price grew with higher prices to $11,049 up from $9,876 the week before. Expressed as a percentage of the asking price, the average discount slipped to 3.6%, just slightly lower than last week’s 3.7%. The percentage of sellers who completed a deal within ten thousand dollars of their asking price fell from eighty-one percent last week to sixty-five percent with pretty much all of that sixteen percent disappearing from the lowest discount bracket of “up to $5,000.”
Map displaying the boundaries of Saskatoon real estate areas
Data collection and calculation for our statistical reports
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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Saskatoon Real Estate
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
5% of listings expiring doesn’t mean there is less stuff for sale.
I bet it’s all out there, just sellers who couldn’t sell and didn’t.
There is probably a lot of stuff out there, just waiting to be stuck back on the market.
Maybe people who over paid a year ago for a over priced condo.
5% of listings didn’t just change their mind.
Lance,
It’s certainly true that expired listings are not sold, and often, these homeowners would still like to sell. It’s also true that some number of listings should expire without a sale. This is one of a couple of checks and balances that can keep prices in check. If everything listed could be sold there could be no balance.
It also appears that 2009 will produce the lowest number of expired listings in a decade. Here is the number of expired listings from the previous 10 years.
2000 – 2,086
2001 – 1,989
2002 – 1,336
2003 – 1,573
2004 – 1,666
2005 – 1,674
2006 – 1,236
2007 – 1,317
2008 – 1,914
2009 – 973 year-to-date.
If every listing that is scheduled to expire between now and December 31 actually fails to sell we would end the year with 1,182 expired listings, the lowest number in a decade.
If that isn’t enough of a reality check, consider that at this time last year there was an 8.3 month supply of residential property for sale in Saskatoon. Today, the total supply is 3.5 months. 2010 may bring some challenges with inventory but based on what’s been going on this year and the current momentum that the market is displaying my math is suggesting there’s more danger of a shortage than an oversupply.