Calgary's Vacancy Rate

Calgary’s vacancy rate is certainly a hot topic amongst renters across the city. One of the recent factors that brought this to the attention of home owners and renters alike was the June 2013 flood that affected most of Calgary’s inner city neighbourhoods. A higher demand for apartment vacancies during this time while the average apartment rent price was also rising, lead to highest average two-bedroom rent increase over the past ten years.

In October 2013, the apartment vacancy rate in Calgary was one per cent, seeing a fall from 1.3 per cent in October 2012. Comparing this vacancy rate to other major cities across Canada, you can see that Calgary has the lowest vacancy rate in the whole country. Toronto is at a steady 1.6 per cent, only dropping 0.1 per cent from October 2012, whereas Vancouver’s vacancy rate is also on the decline from 1.8 per cent to 1.7 in October 2013. We can compare and contrast these declining vacancy rates with the highest vacancy rate in the country in St. Johns, Newfoundland, which has a staggering 11.4 per cent vacancy rate.

In terms of types of apartments referenced, three-or-more bedroom units were seen to be the lowest vacancy at only 0.4 per cent in October 2013. Two-bedroom units, an apartment unit that is obviously in high demand whether for families or roommate situations, decreased from 1.5 per cent in October 2012 to 1.1 per cent in October 2013.

While the vacancies declined in all zones that comprise the Calgary Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), the Downtown Calgary zone saw a slight increase from 0.5 per cent to one per cent in 2013, which can be attributed to new apartment complexes being rented. Alternatively, the area that was hardest hit in terms of vacancy was the Southeast zone that declined from 1.9 per cent to 0.7 per cent in 2013.