Housing sales and price continue to decline in Saskatoon.

The Saskatoon Region Association of Realtors (SRAR) said sales in the city during January dropped by one per cent from the same period a year ago, with 199 transactions.

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The year-over-year average sale price continued to fall, down 12.3 per cent from January 2018 to $302,412.

The average price a year ago was $344,720, and $341,260 in January 2017.

The composite home price index (HPI), which SRAR said is a more accurate reflection of pricing trends, was $286,500, down from $292,400 in January 2018.

The HPI for a typical single-family home was $304,300, down from $307,300 a year ago.

New residential listings during the month were down 10 per cent from a year ago to 555, its lowest level in six years.

SRAR CEO Jason Yochim said this could be a positive sign for prices to rebound.

“It’s positive to see the overall number of active listings decline to prepare the way for prices to recover,” Yochim said in a statement.

Saskatoon remains a buyers’ market, with a sales to new listing ratio of 34.

SRAR said it would take 8.7 months to sell the current inventory, with the average home spending 75.8 days on the market.

On Thursday, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) released its first quarter housing market outlook for Saskatoon.

The agency said there is a moderate degree of vulnerability due to overbuilding, but downgraded the risk of overbuilding from high to moderate.

“The drawdown of new housing inventory, particularly in Saskatoon’s multi-family sector, has continued through much of 2018,” the report said.

“Given that the inventory of completed and unsold units per 10,000 population has stayed below the framework’s threshold for the past three quarters, we have changed our assessment of overbuilding from high to moderate in the current release.”

CMHC said the annual apartment vacancy rate remains high. Although it declined to 8.3 per cent in 2018, the agency said it remains above the critical threshold level of 7.69 per cent.

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