Most Calgary market coverage quotes one citywide number. It is close to the least useful figure available, because nobody buys the city. Here are the five numbers I actually watch, what they say right now, and what each one is bad at.
Number one: four medians, not one
These are medians of sold prices across 20,813 Calgary sales in the twelve months 2025-10-01 to 2026-09-30, from our own analysis of Pillar 9 MLS® data.
- Detached — median sold price $697,428, down 2.0% against the prior twelve months, averaging 36 days on market across 11,021 sales
- Semi Detached (Half Duplex) — median sold price $587,490, down 3.6% against the prior twelve months, averaging 41 days on market across 2,120 sales
- Row/Townhouse — median sold price $420,571, down 5.9% against the prior twelve months, averaging 44 days on market across 3,341 sales
- Apartment — median sold price $296,106, down 7.3% against the prior twelve months, averaging 52 days on market across 4,331 sales
A median is not a price tag. It moves with the mix of what sold as much as with value, and it is not adjusted for size, age or condition. It answers what the middle of a market looks like, not what your home is worth.
Number two: the gap between the top and the bottom — $401,322
The distance between the detached median and the apartment median is $401,322, which is to say a detached house costs about 2.4 times what an apartment condo does at the middle of each market.
That ratio is the most practical number on this page. It sets what a move up actually costs, what a downsize actually releases, and whether the next rung of the ladder is reachable at all on a given income. When it widens, moving up gets harder and downsizing pays better.
Number three: the days-on-market spread — 16 days
Detached homes averaged 36 days to sell over the window; apartments averaged 52. That 16-day spread is the clearest evidence that these are separate markets rather than one market at different price points.
Time on market moves before price does. When a type starts taking longer to sell while its median holds, sellers in that type have not adjusted to something buyers have already noticed. That gap is where negotiation lives, and it closes quietly.
Number four: the direction of travel, by type
The year-over-year moves above are not uniform, and the differences between them are more informative than any single one. A market where every type moves together is responding to rates or confidence. A market where types diverge is responding to supply in specific segments — which is a local question with a local answer.
- Calgary market statistics — by property type and by community
- How these figures are calculated — sources, windows and sample floors
Number five: the one I cannot put in a table
How many homes a buyer in a given band can actually choose from. Citywide inventory is a real number, but the number that decides your negotiation is how many homes you would genuinely be happy with, in the part of the city you will live in, at the price you can carry. That is usually a much smaller list than people expect, and it is the number that sets your leverage.
It is also why two buyers can read the same market report and correctly reach opposite conclusions.
What each of these markets is really competing with
Detached houses compete with the suburbs of a city that keeps expanding outward, which is why newer communities on the edge exert so much downward pressure on older stock at the same price. A buyer choosing between a 1978 house close in and a new build further out is making a trade between commute and condition, and both sellers feel it.
Apartment condos compete with renting, and that is a different contest entirely. When carrying costs rise faster than rents, the marginal buyer stays a tenant, demand thins, and time on market stretches — which is exactly the pattern the days-on-market figures above tend to show.
Row homes and semi-detached sit between the two and get squeezed from both sides. They are the segment where pricing precision matters most, because a buyer at that level has genuine alternatives in both directions.
If this is your first home
Read the apartment and row-home figures above rather than the detached ones, and read the days-on-market number more carefully than the price. A market where your segment is taking longer to sell is a market where you have time to be careful, ask for a full condition period, and walk away from something that does not check out.
That is worth more than shaving a few thousand off the price, and it is the advantage that disappears first when conditions tighten.
- Buying your first home in Calgary — the whole process, start to finish
- Affordability and payment calculators — what a given price actually costs per month
What a median hides, and why it matters here
A median is the middle sale, so it moves when the mix of what sold changes even if no individual home changed value. If a quiet quarter for detached houses coincides with a busy one for apartments, the citywide median falls and every home in the city could still be worth exactly what it was.
That is the single most misread number in Calgary real estate reporting, and it is why these figures are split by property type rather than presented as one citywide average. Within a type the mix still shifts — by size, age and community — which is why the medians here are not adjusted for any of those and should not be read as a value for a specific home.
The window is fixed at the twelve months 2025-10-01 to 2026-09-30 for the same reason. A shorter window is noisier and a rolling one invites comparing periods that are not comparable.
- Our research methodology — sample floors, windows and what we exclude
- Calgary neighbourhood report — the same data community by community
Reading the same numbers as a seller
On these figures detached houses are turning over fastest and apartment condos slowest. If you are selling the slower type, the pricing decision carries more weight than the marketing one, because there are simply fewer buyers moving through that market each week to notice a correction later.
The practical version: the first two weeks are the most valuable inventory your listing will ever have. Every buyer already looking sees it then. Price for those two weeks rather than for the buyer you hope arrives in month three, because by month three your listing is what everyone has already scrolled past.
What none of this answers
Not one of these figures tells you what your home is worth or what you should pay for a specific property. Those are questions about one address: its condition, its street, its lot, and what has sold near it recently.
Send an address and we will do that part properly, with the comparables in front of us.
- Book a call — for a read on a specific home
- Search Calgary listings — filter by type and community