Why Calgary Condos Are Getting Cheaper While Houses Aren't (September 2026)

I've had a version of the same conversation three times this month. A buyer asks why the condo they're watching keeps dropping in price, while the detached bungalow their in-laws want two doors down barely moved. The short answer: these aren't really the same market anymore, even though they're both technically "Calgary real estate."

CREB released its August numbers on September 1, and the split is hard to miss once you look past the headline. Citywide, the benchmark price sits at $569,800, down 1.1% year over year — a number that reads like a mild, balanced market. That single figure is hiding two very different stories underneath it.

The numbers by property type

Detached homes: benchmark $744,300, down just 1.1% year over year, with 3.4 months of supply — still seller-favoring. Semi-detached is actually up 1.0% to $690,500, at 3.3 months of supply. Row and townhouse sit at $415,200, down 5.4%, with 3.9 months of supply, close to balanced.

Apartment-style condos are the outlier: benchmark $295,400, down 8.2% year over year, with 5.7 months of supply. That's a clear buyer's market, and it's been building for a while. CREB's chief economist Ann-Marie Lurie flagged earlier this summer that some pockets, particularly the northeast and east, were seeing condo price drops north of 14%, while detached supply stayed tight enough to push some districts to record prices.

There's also a quieter number worth noting: the average sale price across all of Calgary actually rose 4.3% to $638,440, even as the benchmark fell. That's not a contradiction — it's a mix shift. Condos make up a shrinking share of what's actually trading, so pricier detached and semi-detached sales carry more weight in the average. The city looks more expensive on paper than the benchmark suggests, purely because fewer people are buying the cheaper stuff.

It comes down to what's getting built, and rented

Part of this is supply math. CMHC's data for the first half of 2026 shows overall housing starts in Calgary down about 24% compared to the same period last year — but that decline isn't even across housing types. Rental apartment starts, which still make up close to 60% of everything being built, fell more than 30%. Condo starts, meanwhile, actually ticked up around 4%. On top of that, completed-and-unsold condo inventory dropped 59% from its peak. That sounds like good news, but it mostly means the backlog of pre-sales from 2023 and 2024 has finally worked its way through and landed on the resale market at roughly the same time.

Then there's the rental side, which matters more to condo pricing than most people expect, because a lot of condo buyers are landlords first and owner-occupiers second. Calgary's vacancy rate sat at 5.0% in 2025, comfortably in balanced territory, and asking rents for two-bedroom units have been sliding since — down from an index of 100 in early 2024 to 92.3 by the end of last year. When rents soften because there's more competition from new purpose-built rentals, the "buy a condo, rent it out" math gets a lot tighter. Fewer investor buyers stepping in means less demand pressure on condo prices specifically, even while owner-occupier demand for houses holds up relatively well.

Put it together and you get a market where detached and semi-detached owners are mostly shielded by limited new supply, while condo owners are competing against both a wave of recently completed product and a softer rental backdrop for the investor buyers who'd normally absorb it.

What this means if you own, or want to buy, a condo

If you're selling a condo right now, the biggest mistake I see is pricing off a comparable from six or eight months ago. With 5.7 months of supply, buyers have real leverage, and stale pricing just adds weeks of sitting on the market before you end up cutting anyway.

If you're on the buying side, this is genuinely one of the more interesting entry points into Calgary ownership I've seen in a few years, especially if you've been comparing the monthly cost of renting to the monthly cost of owning. That doesn't mean every condo is a good buy at this price. Reserve fund health and special assessment risk matter more than ever when prices are this compressed, so that's worth digging into building by building before you write an offer, not after.

If you're weighing a condo purchase, whether it's a first home or a rental play, send me the listing and I'll give you a straight read on the numbers before you commit to anything.