Should You Wait for Rates to Drop Before Buying in Calgary?

I get this question almost every week right now, usually some version of: "Rates have to come down eventually, right? Shouldn't I just wait?" It's a fair question, and the honest answer, as of this week, is that the people whose job it is to predict the Bank of Canada have mostly stopped expecting a drop at all.

Here's where things actually stand. The Bank of Canada has held its overnight rate at 2.25% through every single decision this year — six in a row now — and the September 2 announcement wasn't exactly dovish. The headline out of that meeting was "upside risks to inflation have increased," largely tied to U.S. tariffs. The next decision lands October 28, less than three weeks after this goes up, and nobody serious is calling for a cut there either. Through the back half of last year, most of the big six banks shifted from "more cuts are coming" to "no changes this year," and a few started talking about the next move being a hike, not a cut. By January, the tone had softened slightly to "extended hold, maybe a cut if growth disappoints" — but "rates are dropping soon" hasn't been the prevailing call from any of them in months.

The math people are actually waiting on

Right now the best 5-year fixed in Calgary is sitting around 4.3% to 4.5%, and — this part surprises people — variable is actually cheaper, around 3.3%, since prime sits at 4.45% and lenders are discounting variable more aggressively than fixed these days. That's a bit of a role reversal from a few years ago, when fixed was almost always the cheaper headline number. If you're torn between fixed and variable right now, that gap is worth an actual conversation with a broker, not a coin flip.

But say you are waiting specifically for a cut. What would one actually get you? On a $566,700 benchmark Calgary home with 20% down, a 25-basis-point move works out to something like $60 a month off your payment on a 25-year amortization. That's real money over a year, but it's not the kind of number that changes whether you can afford a house — and it's exactly the kind of move that, in the last cutting cycle, got partly offset by renewed buyer competition pushing prices back up before the lower payment fully landed. A rate cut doesn't happen in a vacuum. It tends to happen because the economy needs the help, and when it lands, it usually brings a few more buyers off the sidelines with you.

Calgary's market isn't waiting evenly

This is the part I think gets missed. "Wait for rates" assumes one Calgary market, and there isn't one. September's numbers show detached homes still moving — 896 sales, up more than 4% year-over-year, benchmark price $739,400, and just over three months of supply in the city's northwest, west and south. That's tight. If rates do eventually drop and bring buyers back, that's the segment where I'd expect it to show up first and fastest, because it's already the one with the least room to breathe.

Condos are a different story entirely. Benchmark price is down more than 8% year-over-year to $291,400, sales are down 14%, and there's over five months of supply citywide — closer to six in the northeast. That's already a buyer's market, rate cut or not, because the last three years of construction skewed heavily toward apartments and row homes and that supply hasn't fully worked through yet. If you're shopping condos, waiting for a rate cut to get negotiating leverage is solving a problem you don't have. The leverage is already there.

So "should I wait" really depends on what you're buying. In the condo and row segment, you're not waiting on rates for room to negotiate — you already have it, and every month you wait is a month of carrying costs or rent with nothing to show for it. In detached, where supply is already thin at under three months in parts of the city, waiting for a cut that might also wake up five other buyers in your price range isn't a safe bet. It's a gamble on timing something nobody's currently predicting.

If you are going to wait, wait on purpose. Get pre-approved now so you actually know your number, watch the October 28 announcement and the Monetary Policy Report that comes with it, and decide in advance how much of a rate move would genuinely change your decision. "I'll wait and see" without a number attached to it usually just turns into waiting indefinitely while the market moves anyway.

If you want to run the actual numbers for your situation — what a rate move really does to your specific budget, or which segment makes the most sense for what you're trying to buy — that's exactly the kind of thing I sit down and work through with buyers before they start touring anything. Happy to do that with you too.