Is Now a Bad Time to Sell a Calgary Condo?

I get this question more than almost any other right now, usually from an owner who bought a condo in 2021 or 2022, watched the value climb fast through 2023 and 2024, and is now looking at the latest numbers wondering if they missed the window.

Short answer: it depends what you're comparing it to. Against the 2024 peak, yes, it's a tougher market than it was. Against a realistic exit a year or two from now, the case for waiting is weaker than it looks.

What the numbers actually show

CREB's September figures, released October 2, put the citywide apartment/condo benchmark at $291,400 — down 8.3% from a year earlier and down 1.4% from August alone. The average sold price came in even lower, at $318,759, down 8.7% year over year. Only 343 condos sold in the city that month, a 14.5% drop from September 2025, though it was up 3% from August — a small seasonal bump rather than a straight downhill slide. Months of supply sat at 5.3, which is solidly buyer's-market territory; anything under four is usually considered balanced to seller's.

Compare that to the rest of the market. Detached homes were down just 1% year over year to a $739,400 benchmark, semi-detached actually rose 0.1%, and even row/townhouse — the next-softest category — was down "only" 5.5%. Condos are carrying almost all of the market's weakness right now. If you've been following along that's not new information, but the size of the gap is worth sitting with.

Why condos specifically

Three things are stacked against the segment at once. First, supply: there are roughly 17,000 new condo units under construction across the city, a lot of it product approved back in 2020-2023 that's only completing now. Second, the investor math has gotten worse. Statistics Canada's Q2 2026 data shows one-bedroom asking rents down 6.1% year over year and two-bedrooms down 6.4%, and Calgary's purpose-built apartment vacancy rate sat at 5.0% in CMHC's most recent survey — up from the near-zero vacancy of a couple of years ago. When rent is softening and vacancy is climbing, "buy it and rent it out" stops pencilling for a lot of would-be investors, and that's a chunk of demand that's gone quiet. Third, the foreign buyer restriction and a GST rebate that only helps new-build purchases under certain price thresholds haven't done much to backfill that lost demand.

There's also a mechanical problem showing up in financing. With condo sales down sharply from their 2024 peak — year-to-date sales were off 26% as of June — appraisers have fewer recent comparable sales to work from. Mortgage brokers have reported appraisals coming in $40,000 or more below the agreed purchase price this year, which forces the buyer to either bring extra cash to closing or walk. If you're selling, that's not something you want to find out after you've already accepted an offer.

What I'd actually weigh

A few things matter more than the citywide number. Location: the north and northeast have taken the biggest hit and have the most new supply competing with resale units, while other areas are holding up noticeably better. Unit type: a well-located, lower-density condo in a smaller building is a different conversation than a high-rise unit competing directly against a developer's unsold inventory next door. And timing against your own situation matters more than timing against the market — if you need to sell for life reasons, waiting for a recovery that depends on investor demand coming back is a bet, not a plan.

What I wouldn't do is panic-price off worst-case headlines, and I also wouldn't list at 2024 numbers and wait for the market to catch up. Realistic pricing plus a longer runway — expect more than the citywide average of 44 days on market for a condo specifically — tends to actually get deals done right now. The buyers out there for condos are mostly end-users and value-focused investors doing real math, not FOMO buyers, so your listing needs to make sense to that kind of buyer.

If you're sitting on a Calgary condo and trying to figure out what it's actually worth in this market — not what it was worth in 2024, and not a worst-case guess either — I'd rather walk you through your specific building and area than have you work off a citywide average. That's a conversation worth having before you list, not after.