Category Archives: Saskatoon

Believe it or not, January is a good time to sell your home in Saskatchewan!

It doesn’t feel like it would be, with this cold weather, and all the snow, but January is actually a pretty good month to sell your home in Saskatchewan.

In January of 2013, we had a total of 89 listings on saskhouses.com, and 57 of those listings were reported Sold by their owners. That is a listing to sale success rate of 64.04 percent, which was the best success rate of any month in 2013!

Part of the reason is that there normally aren’t a lot of homes to choose from early in the year, as many sellers wait until spring to list their homes for sale. In January, there are already a lot of buyers in the market, but not as many sellers, which usually means a pretty good success rate for sellers!

And how does that rate compare with the success rate of listings on MLS? It’s a bit tough to compare, but in 2012, the Saskatoon Real Estate Board had a total of 10,857 listings, with 5,564 sales, for a listing to sale success rate of 51.24 %. Our success rate for 2012 was 54.85%. Our success rate for the entire year of 2013 right now is 49.44%, but that includes a lot of properties which were listed within the past 60 days, so I expect that number to increase to about 55% as well within the next couple of months.

The success rate of private sellers on saskhouses.com is just as good or better than the success rate of sellers who choose to market their homes through the MLS system, at a fraction of the cost. And if you are thinking of selling in 2014, it might be better to beat the rush, and list your property before spring.

If you are thinking of selling your home with saskhouses.com, the process is easy as 1-2-3 – you can start by filling out one of our on-line listing forms by clicking here.

If you are thinking of buying, you can view all of our listings by clicking here.

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Average house prices remain high in Saskatchewan

The average asking price of a listing in Saskatoon on Saskatchewan’s leading website for private home sales in 2013 was $375,876.

Home prices continued to slowly rise throughout much of Saskatchewan in 2013 as the province set new population records, and demand for housing continued to be strong.

The average asking price in Saskatoon bedroom communities wasn’t far behind the asking prices in the city.

In Martensville, the average asking price in 2013 was $359,262, and the average asking price in Warman was $360,529.

Prices were also very strong in Prince Albert, with an average asking price in 2013 of $327,405.

Most forecasters are predicting house prices to remain strong in Saskatchewan in 2014, as the province’s economy and population continue to grow.

Team Saskatchewan heads to International Under 18 Curling Championship in Vancouver

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Okay, this has nothing to do with buying or selling homes, but I thought I would let you know that my son Nick is heading out to the Optomist Under 18 Curling Championship in Vancouver this week.

For Nick and his cousin Anthony, this is their second trip to the event. They finished 5th at the event in Toronto last year with team mates Brady Kendel & Jake Hersikorn. Brady and Jake were too old to compete this year, so Nick & Tony teamed up with a couple of their long-time rivals, Chad and Brett Lang, and the four of them won the Provincial Championship last weekend in Shaunavon.

We are all looking forward to a great event in Vancouver this weekend. There will be teams competing from Japan, the United States, and Canada. Team Saskatchewan is in the Men’s A Pool with Japan, B.C., Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories. You can follow the event at u18curling.ca

Sask Property listed on saskhouses.com surpasses 4 Billion dollars

The total dollar value of Saskatchewan property advertised for sale on Saskatchewan’s leading website for private sales passed the 4 billion dollar mark in 2012.

In 2012, $553,081,129 dollars worth of Saskatchewan property was listed for sale on saskhouses.com, bringing the total since the company started in 1999, to $4,099,742,184.

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The average asking price of a saskhouses.com listing continued to increase in 2012, reaching a record high of $347,850. That was an increase of more than 7 percent from the average asking price in 2011 of $323, 240, and it was an increase of more than 122 percent from the average asking price in 2002, when we began tracking that number.

Here is the year-by-year average asking price of listings on saskhouses.com since 2002.

2012 – $347,850

2011 – $323,240

2010 – $314,504

2009 – $306,232

2008 – $317,020

2007 – $246,711

2006 – $185,191

2005 – $164,503

2004 – $156,652

2003 – $152,532

2002 – $156,340

We would like to thank Saskatchewan buyers and sellers for making saskhouses.com the most successful private sale website in the Province, and we look forward to another exceptional year in 2013!

Saskatchewan population growth continues

The population of Saskatchewan has hit another all-time high. New population numbers released by Statistics Canada show that 1,086,564 people were living in Saskatchewan at the end of October 2012.

That’s an increase of 6,606 people in the third quarter of 2012, and an increase of 23,024 people from October of 2011.

Most of the population growth in the last three months came from international migration, with more than 3,700 people moving here from other Countries. Almost 1,300 people moved to Saskatchewan from other provinces during the third quarter, with more than half of those newcomers coming from the province of Ontario.

248 people moved here from Manitoba in the past quarter, 194 people came from British Columbia, and 34 came from Alberta.

The Provincial Government has a goal of 1.2 million people living in Saskatchewan by the year 2020. If our population growth continues at last year’s rate of 2.1 percent, we will have 1,281,845 people living in Saskatchewan by this time in 2020.

Our population growth bodes well for the housing industry in Saskatchewan, and for sales of existing homes in the province. Prices throughout most of the Province have pretty much doubled since this time 6 years ago, and they have been stable, or slowly rising for the past couple of years.

New neighbourhood in the works for Downtown Saskatoon

Plans are underway for a new neighbourhood in downtown Saskatoon, which could someday be home for as many as 12,000 people.

The new neighbourhood will be bordered by 24th Street to the South, Idylwyld Drive to the West, 33rd Street to the North, and First Avenue to the East.

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Plans for the new neighbourhood are in the hands of a Vancouver company, Perkins & Will, which will be paid $315,000 to develop a plan for the new area.

The City is hoping the new neighbourhood will be an environmentally friendly, walkable community connected to the downtown core.

It will likely be awhile though before you see any development towards the new neighbourhood. The City first has to figure out where to move the City Yards, which takes up a good chunk of the area. The City is hoping to move the Yards to the Montgomery Place area, but no plans for that have been yet been made.

Another record breaking year for Saskatoon Building Permits

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The City of Saskatoon is reporting that more than 1 billion dollars worth of building permits have been issued in Saskatoon so far in 2012. The total amount of building permits issued as of the end of November was 1.05 billion dollars, with residential housing making up most of that new construction.

The dollar value of building permits in 2011 was $936.9 million dollars, and in 2010 it was $666 million dollars.

Much of the new residential construction has taken place in the City’s new neighbourhoods of Evergreen, Willowgrove, Rosewood, Hampton Village, and Stonebridge.

The City says it is anticipating another billion dollars in new construction in Saskatoon in 2013.

Average Saskatoon asking prices continue to slowly rise

We’ve been tracking the average asking price of our Saskatoon sellers for the past few years, and the latest evidence shows that averaeg asking prices are continuing to slowly increase in the Saskatoon area.

The average asking price of Saskatoon listings on saskhouses.com during the month of November was $363,965, an increase of just over $17,000 from the average asking price in November of 2011, and about $19,000 more than the average asking price of $344,249 in November of 2010.

Average Saskatoon asking prices hit a three year high of $386,591 during the month of October. The lowest average asking price we’ve seen since we started tracking them was $302,806 in January of 2011.

The chart below shows the average asking price of Saskatoon listings since January 2010.

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