The reason is what goes into the benchmark. It blends apartments, row and townhouse properties, semi-detached and detached homes into one measure of a typical Saskatoon property. Detached family homes are the larger and more expensive end of that blend, so the composite figure understates them. The association publishes property type benchmarks in the same monthly report, and that is the specific number to ask for rather than the headline.
Neighbourhood matters at least as much as property type. A newer east side family home in Willowgrove or Rosewood, a 1980s two storey in Erindale and a character home in Nutana are three different markets that happen to share a city. Note also that the minimum down payment steps from 5 percent to 10 percent on any portion of the price above $500,000, which is a real threshold at family home price points and shapes how deep the buyer pool goes.
For a seller, the benchmark is context, not a valuation. It cannot see a finished basement, a rebuilt kitchen, a new furnace or the addition that was never permitted, and neither can an online estimate drawing on the same public data. Joel Dyck's hand-reviewed valuation puts your specific house against real comparable sales and counts the improvements.