By the time a buyer tells me they want to write on a house, they have usually seen it twice and already decided. My job at that point is not enthusiasm. It is to spend an afternoon honestly trying to find the reason not to. Seven things get checked before an offer leaves my desk, every time, and in a normal week at least one of them changes the number or the decision.
The offer is the last step, not the first
Most of what follows can be done before you write. The rest belongs inside the condition period. Which items land where depends entirely on how competitive the situation is. On a home in a slow segment I will do nearly all of it first, because there is time and because it makes the offer sharper. On a home that will have three offers by Sunday, some of it moves into conditions, and those conditions have to be real ones with enough days attached to actually complete them.
What does not change is the list. Skipping a check because the house shows beautifully is how buyers end up paying, years later, for a decision somebody else made.
- Is this Calgary home actually a good buy? — the evaluation that happens before this list
1. Title, and what the Real Property Report shows
Title tells you what you are legally buying and what is registered against it. Easements, utility rights-of-way, restrictive covenants, caveats and encroachment agreements. In Calgary the two that come up most often are a utility right-of-way running along a rear property line and older restrictive covenants in established communities that quietly limit what can be built.
The Real Property Report is the companion document. It is a survey showing where the structures actually sit relative to the property lines, and a current municipal compliance stamp says the City has confirmed those structures comply with the relevant bylaws. This is where a garage built two feet over the line, a deck sitting inside a right-of-way, or a fence that was never on the boundary finally shows up.
Who provides the RPR, how current it has to be, and what happens if compliance has lapsed are all negotiated terms in Alberta, not fixed rules. Your lawyer will tell you what they need to close, and in Alberta it is a lawyer, not a notary.
A title search costs very little and takes minutes. An encroachment discovered the week before possession is neither cheap nor quick.
- Do I need a Real Property Report? — what it is and who pays for it
- Title insurance in Alberta — what it covers and what it does not replace
- Do I need a lawyer to buy in Alberta? — yes, and here is what they actually do
2. Permits — what was built, and whether the City ever saw it
I look for permit records on anything that changed the house: basement development, decks, garages, suites, window enlargements, furnace and hot water tank replacements, electrical panel changes, structural walls removed in a renovation. What I am looking for is not only missing permits but open ones, where a permit was pulled and the final inspection never happened.
An unpermitted finished basement is not automatically a problem to live in. It becomes a problem in three specific places: what your insurer is willing to cover, what you have to disclose when you sell, and what happens if the City is ever asked about it by a neighbour or a future buyer. What the City requires and what it will do about existing work varies by the situation and by when the work was done, so verify the specific property with the City rather than assuming.
- Buyer beware of permits — the unpermitted work we see most often
- Basement development permits — what gets missed in a finished basement
3. Condo documents, if it is a condo
If the home is a condominium, an apartment or a townhouse, the documents are the purchase. The building matters more than the unit and the unit is the part people look at. I want the reserve fund study and the most recent plan, the last two years of board minutes, the current budget and financial statements, the bylaws, the insurance certificate with the deductible, and any record of special assessments already levied or being discussed.
The minutes are the part buyers skip and the part that tells you the most. You are reading for repetition. The same roof discussed at four meetings, the same parkade membrane, the same envelope consultant, a board that has turned over twice in a year. None of that appears in the reserve fund study until somebody decides to act on it.
Bylaws vary building to building and they are not interchangeable. Pets, rentals, short-term rentals, age restrictions, smoking, what you may put on a balcony. Read the bylaws for the actual building rather than assuming the rules match the last condo you looked at.
- How to research a Calgary condo building — the document-by-document read
- Special assessments in condos — how they arise and who ends up paying
- Post-tension cable failure — a Calgary-specific item worth knowing about
4. The physical items that cost real money
This is the walkthrough I do before an inspector ever gets booked, because the answers change the offer rather than the conditions. I am not inspecting. I am costing.
- Roof. Age, material, and whether Calgary hail has already been through it. Ask whether there has been a claim.
- Furnace and hot water tank. Both have serial numbers with dates on them. Both are predictable expenses once you know the age.
- Electrical service and panel. What is coming into the house, what kind of panel it is, and whether the wiring matches the era of the home.
- Supply plumbing. Poly-B in a certain range of Calgary build years, and what has or has not already been replaced.
- Windows. Original versus replaced, and whether the replacements were done all at once or one wall at a time.
- Foundation, grading and drainage. Calgary clay moves. I look at where the downspouts discharge, which way the lot slopes, and what the soil is doing against the wall.
- Insulation and what is in the attic. In older homes this includes vermiculite, which is its own separate conversation.
None of these are automatic reasons to walk. They are numbers, and numbers belong in the offer rather than in a renegotiation three weeks later when everyone is already emotionally committed.
- What to inspect, by decade — what a 1978 home tends to have that a 2004 home does not
- How old is too old for a furnace or roof? — when age becomes a budget line
- Which foundation cracks are serious? — most are not, and here is the difference
5. The comparables, read honestly
Sold, not listed. Same property type, same price band, same part of the city, and recent enough to reflect the market the seller is actually in. Then adjusted for the things that genuinely move value in Calgary: finished square footage above and below grade, whether the basement is developed and legally so, garage and its type, lot size and position, and condition relative to the comparable.
Honest reading means including the sales that hurt the argument. It is very easy to assemble four comparables that support the number a buyer already wants, and I have watched agents do it in both directions. If three comparables say one thing and one says something uncomfortable, the uncomfortable one usually deserves the most attention.
- How far back should comparables go? — recency versus sample size
- How to tell if a home is overpriced — the test I run
- Does price per square foot matter? — less than people think
6. The street, and what happens on it
Showings happen at convenient hours, which is exactly when a street is on its best behaviour. I ask buyers to drive it three times: a weekday morning, a weeknight after supper, and a Saturday afternoon. What you are looking for does not photograph.
Street parking pressure, which is a different problem in an inner-city community with single garages off a lane than it is in a newer suburb. Lane traffic and where the bins go. School pick-up, if the home sits on the route. A business or a busy intersection at the corner. Whether the homes either side look owner-occupied. In winter, where the plow puts the windrow and whether the walks get cleared, which tells you something about the neighbours that no listing will.
And look for what is coming. An inner-city street where half the lots are being redeveloped is a different purchase than one where nothing has changed in twenty years, and neither is automatically better. It depends on what you are buying it for.
- Does backing onto a busy road hurt value? — the discount is real and it is also predictable
- The cheapest house on the best street — when the old advice actually holds
7. The exit
The last check is the one buyers find strangest at the time and thank me for later. Before you buy, I want to know who buys this home from you.
Every property has a buyer pool on the way out, and some pools are far smaller than others. A fourth bedroom converted into a walk-in closet removes the families who need four bedrooms. A detached garage taken down for a deck removes most Calgary buyers full stop. A highly specific renovation, an unusual layout, a location trade-off that suits your commute and nobody else's — each one narrows the next set of buyers.
That is not an argument against buying. Plenty of good purchases carry a narrow exit and the buyer knew it and accepted it. The failure is not knowing, and finding out on your own listing five years later when the showings do not come.
- What hurts resale value in Calgary — the items that shrink your buyer pool
- Which communities hold their value best — the location side of the same question
When a check comes back badly
There are three possible outcomes and only one of them is dramatic. Most of the time the number changes: we found something, we costed it, and it comes off the offer. Sometimes the terms change instead — a longer condition period so a specialist can get in, a holdback, a repair completed before possession. Occasionally we stop, and the buyer is disappointed for about a week.
The conditions in your offer are where the unfinished checks live. That is their whole purpose. The rule I will not bend is that you do not waive a condition covering work you have not actually completed, and you do not agree to a condition period shorter than the work requires. A deadline missed is its own separate problem in Alberta and not one you want to discover the hard way.
- What conditions belong on an offer — and which ones sellers actually mind
- How long should the condition period be? — long enough to finish the list
- What happens if I miss a deadline? — why the dates are not soft
Where to start
You do not need to run all seven yourself. You need to know they are being run, and by whom, and to see the answers before you are asked to waive anything. In Alberta your REALTOR® works under designated agency: the person doing this work represents you specifically and owes you the honest version of what they found.
If it helps to see how the market itself is behaving while you are deciding, our Calgary market statistics page tracks activity by property type and community and updates as the data does.
And if you have a specific address in front of you and want a second set of eyes on it before you write, that is a short conversation. Bring the address. We will tell you what the checks say, including the times they say go ahead.