Prices in the city take a small dip

Buying a house in Saskatoon has become more affordable, but only slightly.

According to a Royal LePage house price survey released Tuesday, the aggregate price of a house in Saskatoon dropped by half a percentage point, settling the average price at $385,980 — a dip equalling slightly less than $1,800.

The median price of a two-storey home dropped by 1.5 per cent to $412,795, while bungalows saw a 0.9 per cent rise in price to $355,623, according to the survey report.

The largest decrease in the market was the price of purchasing a condo, according to Norm Fisher, a broker and owner of Royal LePage Vidorra in Saskatoon.

“Condo prices have fallen close to 10 per cent over the past three years, due to a fairly major surplus of inventory and softer demand. We are starting to see that level out and improve some, like in the last year we estimate that condos are probably down about 2.5 per cent ... but the positive news is that those units, in terms of the sheer volume that is trading, we’ve sold 23 per cent more condominiums in the first quarter of 2017 than we did in the first quarter of 2016.”

While housing prices in Saskatoon stayed relatively flat over the last year, in Regina they rose by 1.8 per cent. Even the 11.3 per cent drop in condo prices and the 1.4 per cent drop in bungalow prices failed to even out the 7.8 per cent jump, equal to just over $30,000, in the two-storey housing market.

Nationally, the average price of a home in Canada grew 12.6 per cent last year to $574,103, although Fisher noted those numbers are skewed by high prices in Toronto and Vancouver.

“I think the housing market in general looks more like Saskatoon than it does in Toronto or Vancouver. When you take those major markets out of the national equation, I think the average price of a home would be $25-$30,000 lower.”