Is Calgary Still a Seller's Market? What the August Numbers Actually Show

I still get asked, almost weekly, whether I should "get in before it's too late" or price a listing high because "everything in Calgary sells over asking." Neither of those is true anymore, and I'd rather tell you that plainly than let you find out the hard way three weeks into a listing that isn't moving.

Start with the number that surprised me the most: according to CREB's own release, Calgary logged 1,660 sales in August 2026, down 16% from August of last year. New listings were down too, about 10% year-over-year, so it's not simply a story of buyers disappearing while sellers keep piling on inventory — both sides have pulled back. That's been the pattern through most of 2026, not a one-month blip.

Then there's the stat that actually changed how I talk to sellers: not a single Calgary neighborhood sold above asking price in the fourth quarter of 2025. Go back to 2021 through 2023 and that would've sounded absurd — over-asking sales were the norm in plenty of areas, sometimes the expectation. That era is over, at least for now, and pricing a listing as if it's still 2022 is one of the fastest ways I see homes sit.

What makes this more interesting than a simple "market's cooling, sorry" story is that it isn't one market anymore — it's two. Detached homes in some pockets of the west and south have kept setting records, with less than three months of supply reported earlier this year, which is still tight by any definition. Apartment-style condos are telling a completely different story: prices down around 9% as of the summer, driven by a wave of new high-density supply hitting the market faster than demand is absorbing it. If you're comparing your own situation to "the Calgary market" as one number, you're comparing it to the wrong thing.

So what does this actually mean if you're buying or selling right now? If you're selling a detached home in a tight segment, you may still have real leverage — but I'd still price it off actual recent comparables, not off what the identical model sold for in 2023. If you're selling a condo, especially in a building competing against new construction, expectations need to be realistic from day one; overpricing in a soft segment tends to cost you more in the long run than pricing it right and getting a clean sale. And if you're buying, this is the first market in a few years where you can reasonably ask for conditions, take time on a decision, and negotiate — which is a different skill than the one everyone got used to during the bidding-war years.

None of this is a prediction about where things go next. It's a read on where things actually stand right now, based on numbers that update monthly and that I watch closely for exactly this reason. If you want to know what any of this means for a specific property — yours or one you're considering — that's a comparable-sales conversation, not a general-market one, and it's worth having before you set a price or make an offer.