Buy for the way you actually live. But there are two points in the Calgary market where the buyer pool changes shape, and they are worth knowing before you choose.
Every bedroom beyond what you use is a room you heat, clean, furnish and pay for. Buying one for a hypothetical future buyer is how people end up paying for space nobody sleeps in.
Bedrooms above grade and total bedrooms are different numbers, and plenty of homes reach four only by counting a basement room. That matters two ways: families want everyone sleeping on the same level, and a below-grade room needs a window meeting egress requirements before it is a bedroom at all rather than a room with a bed in it.
Watch for the den with no window or closet, and for the bonus room, which can often be enclosed into a fourth bedroom subject to window and code requirements — a practical route to four-up in communities where built four-bedroom homes are scarce.
Two full bathrooms upstairs does as much for a four-bedroom home's appeal as the fourth bedroom does. So does whether the secondary bedrooms are honest sizes rather than squeezed to reach a number, whether laundry is upstairs or in the basement, and whether the kitchen and mudroom scale with the household the bedroom count implies. A four-bedroom plan with one bathroom up and a tight entry gets uncomfortable fast, and buyers feel it in the first ninety seconds of a showing.
Current inventory is on the 4+ bedroom homes search. If the extra room is really about space rather than sleeping, a finished basement is usually the cheaper answer.