On Tuesday, Calgary City Council received a report from David Duckworth, the city’s chief administrative officer, on activities in the city in the first quarter of 2025 that included a look at the state of housing in the city. In his report, Duckworth said, “Calgary’s housing market is beginning to stabilize, while home construction hits new heights. Calgary’s rental market and average market rent cooled in Q1.” “While housing prices remained at an all-time high, house prices increased at a lower rate this quarter compared to the same time in 2024, as the balance between housing supply and demand began to stabilize.” Calgary has seen a great influx of interprovincial migration over the last 18 months, primarily from Ontario and BC and they’re buying new homes. Calgary and area new home builders recorded more than 20,000 new home starts in 2024, following that up with 4,995 starts in the first quarter of 2025, a year-over-year increase of 16% and representing 55% of all new home starts in Alberta. Most of those starts were for homes already sold, with buyers awaiting completion. The exception is in the multi-family high-rise apartment sector, where roughly 70% of the apartments in any building must be sold before construction starts. At the same time, new home starts dropped 12.5% nationally. .Regardless, Duckworth said more efforts are required to add to the housing supply. “The city is taking action to improve housing supply, choice and affordability. Our ‘Home is Here Strategy’ drives our response to the housing crisis. While 85% of the strategy’s actions have been initiated, results are just beginning to take effect,” he said. “The city has established a chief housing officer position to steward the city’s corporate-wide action on housing and leverage funding and partnerships to increase supply and support the housing sector.” Duckworth added the city has improved its internal red tape processes, particularly in reducing the time for building and occupancy permit approvals, with occupancy inspection approvals within two days. "The city continues to lead the country in the number of new housing units approved,” he said. “In 2024, the city approved development permits for 22,500 units, a 57% increase in unit approvals from 2023. As of Q1 2025, the city approved 5,397 new units.” In the first quarter of 2025, the city issued a record of 7,965 occupancy permits, an 85% increase from the same time period in 2024, the bulk coming from the multi-family homes sector. “Applications for affordable, non-market housing are given priority status for review and designated to an affordable housing customer coordinator to steward,” said Duckworth. .The City of Calgary applied for, and received, funding from the former federal Liberal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) to the tune of $22.8 million, plus bonuses for new multi-family homes. "The new funding supports housing in Calgary’s downtown and incentivizes backyard and accessory dwellings across the city,” said Duckworth. “By the end of Q1, the city reached 95% of our HAF target of accelerating the delivery of 42,667 units.” Duckworth said the affordable housing market in Calgary is growing. “In 2024, 893 non-market units reached the development permit stage, reflecting strong growth in Calgary’s affordable housing supply, an 850% increase from 2023,” he said. The city is on pace to see 948 non-market homes reach the development permit stage in 2025, based on 237 approvals in the first quarter of 2025. The city has a downtown office-to-residential program available to developers. “Through our downtown development incentive program, the city is incentivizing the conversion of vacant office space into homes for Calgarians at a fraction of the cost of new construction,” said Duckworth. “We are progressing towards our target of 1,500 homes by 2026.”
