What to Expect When Buying your First Calgary Condo 

Your journey in purchasing a condo for the first time can be both challenging and exciting. You have to be all prepped up for all types of soul-searching and decision-making. After all, this is one of the biggest investments of your life and you don’t want to end up making the wrong choice. 

By now, you might have countless questions running through your mind. Here is some relevant information to point you in the right direction: 

Know...

There’s no stopping urban renewal the Calgary real estate scene.   Old makes way for new and many established neighbourhoods are experiencing a renaissance.  The demand for new, modern homes for sale in inner-city neighbourhoods grows every day and there are so many reasons why.

From a zoning point of view, the City of Calgary’s sustainability plan dictates that developers create residential density.  Housing people along transit corridors and within walking distance to work and essential services is good for the environment and creates healthy communities.  Part of the plan was to stem the flow of suburban sprawl, as Calgary is one of the largest cities in North America per square kilometre but without the population to warranty such...

We’re not immune to disasters in (think 2013) but we are so lucky we don’t have mud slides or wildfires that send us fleeing from our homes in Calgary in the middle of the night.  Whether you were an unfortunate victim of flooding early five years ago, or if you watch the nightly news with trepidation and empathy, we are all thinking about what’s important.  Real estate is important – possessions are important and we all go to extraordinary lengths to protect our assets.   If you own investment properties in Calgary, there are a variety of things to think about when it comes to mitigating damage – no matter how minor. 

If you are a landlord with rental property in Calgary, or if you are a renter in...

While drilling down into some of the new statistics that the Calgary Real Estate Board recently released, we discovered something very interesting.   The district of Calgary West  which is loosely defined as everything west of Crowchild Trail, north of Glenmore Trail/Highway 8 and south of the river or Trans-Canada Highway, is one of the city’s most stable market areas. That’s in all housing types, from single-family to attached, town homes and condos.  Calgary West showed the strongest annual growth in 2017 with only City Centre to look up to.

The Proof is in the Numbers

As the following chart will show, the communities in Calgary West survived the recent downturn as the best for single-family homes and was the runner-up for apartment...

We think it’s going to be a fairly decent year for real estate in Calgary.

This morning was the annual Calgary Real Estate Board’s Forecast Breakfast and whether the market is up, down or sideways we always come away with renewed vigor and optimism about how the year is going to go.   And today’s event was no excpetion.

CREB always likes to be cautiously optimistic and has announced that 2018 will offer its share of challenges.  The road to economic recovery continues to be bumpy – nothing is happening overnight – but there’s every indication that we can safely adopt an optimistic attitude.

The Short Term

Over coffee and dainties this morning, we...

 As the make-up of today’s families change so does the way families live in our city and the type of real estate purchased in Calgary.  Hence the rise of homes with duo or double master bedrooms.  Lifestyle often dictates architectural style and that’s what we’re beginning to see in Calgary homes. 

Why They’re Referred to as Master Bedrooms 

Looking back through history, the largest and grandest chamber or bedroom in a home, was used by the owner or master of the estate.  The French term was “chambre des maitres”.    The term when applied to new home construction really came into its own in the 1920s, when houses in urban neighbourhoods began to feature one bedroom that was larger than the others in the home, with...

Last month’s Calgary real estate statistics show the market in our city is in maintenance-mode.  No worse and no better when you look at Calgary as a whole.  A little worse in some areas and a little better in some.

The Good News

Starting on a positive note, October was a good month if you are selling a semi-detached home.  Duplexes or “paired homes” as some marketers are starting to call them, have seen the best improvement this year in terms of price gains.  The average price for a semi-detached home was $419,400 which is 3% more than 2016 levels.  Demand is up across the city for semi-detached.  It’s the only product that has experienced sales...

The page on the calendar flips to November and buyers are also flipping through a record number of Calgary real estate listings online.  Looking for that one, unique property that catches their eye.

That’s another reason why it’s important to keep up that curb appeal even through the winter months, long after the grass has turned yellow and the leaves have fallen and, hopefully, been raked up and bagged.   You want your home’s exterior to look it best no matter what time of year it is.

Here are just a few ideas to make sure your home stands out so potential buyers, when they drive past your home, will see it looks...

We just got the stats for September 2017 and sales slipped a little in Calgary real estate last month.  The good news is that we had some good numbers in the first six months of 2017 and this activity managed to boost our year-to-date average up by 7% over 2016.  It’s still 11% under those long-term averages, and I agree with the Calgary Real Estate Board's take on the market – with more listings coming in and sales slowing in this last quarter of the year, we’re going to have to work hard to maintain our optimism!

There was a bump in inventory last month – we were up by 6,861 units – with attached properties and apartment condos setting a record for the highest inventory ever.  That means, from a buyer’s...