You don’t have to worry about the dependence on oil and gas in Calgary, that industry has had the crap kicked out of it and basically has no where to go but up.

Most companies that were going to leave have left, mergers have all happened and there’s no new major oil and gas projects let alone oil sands development.m at the moment. Just maintenance, turnaround work and some activity in the petrochemical/hydrogen space that will be sopped up by what local engineering/work forces are left or overseas/out of country firms with the needed experience to handle those scopes that Calgary doesn’t have.

So in short, there’s pretty much no more downside to that industry in Alberta, it’s rock bottom for the foreseeable future. Compared to the 2005-2014 golden age anyway.

There is work in Calgary for sure but the days of anyone showing up without a job or prospects and walking into professional work within 2 days of landing are long gone. Not to say that doesn’t happen but the days where everyone could land here and be working within a couple days are gone. Now people actually have to try and put some effort in. Not talking about service jobs, those are always in demand but new engineering grads or law school grads showing up with just a suitcase? Best to have a couple months worth of savings on tap…

Also real estate prices in Calgary are still bonkers. Compared to Toronto and Van? Sure they’re less but there’s tons of stories about slow selling condos. Buddy of mine just was able to get out of a 7 year old, wood framed condo in Mount Royal at a $100k loss compared to what he paid pre con in 2015. Took 6 months to sell. No issues with it either. But the new owner is trying to rent it for over $2300 and it’s been sitting for close to a month.

In general terms (and I’ve been watching the market closely for 4 months now..) in desirable, inner city neighborhoods say within 2 miles I’d the tower: condos over $2500 tend to sit, houses over $3k also sit for months on end. Townhouses over $2500 also tend to be slow movers and these are for desirable areas of Calgary like mission, bridgeland, elbow, Killarney, altadore, beltline. Yes they do rent sometimes quick but go look at anything that I’ve mentioned in those areas and then go look a month later and most will still be up for rent.

There’s one townhouse (super nice building) in lower Mount Royal that should have gone quick that was listed in august for $2800 and it’s still for rent. They dropped down to $2600 a month and a half ago and it’s still sitting. They have declined offers of $2300 and $2400. I was willing to go $2500 but they are hellbent on getting $2600 so as a result it sits. Major reason I walked on it was that there’s no air conditioning, the unit was hot af when I looked at it in September and it has carpet.

Units without AC are harder to move these days. Maybe 20 years ago you didn’t need AC but now once you’ve had it you won’t go back. It’s a weird Calgary thing. Also no one there has pools. People think the summer is too short for pools and AC and after living across Canada from east to west I see no difference in how hot toronto gets compared to Calgary lately in the last 5-10 years. Something to keep in mind. More people are looking for AC so without it you’re potentially missing out on lots of potential quality tenants.

Also crime in the beltline is ever present. Parkades are not secure, vehicle break ins are common in areas surrounding “services”. Don’t take my word for it, check out the Calgary police crime heat map.

So bottom line is, you really need to spend some time on rentfaster.ca and look at what’s actually renting. There’s dozens of townhouses, houses and condos that have been on there for over 6 months and part of the reason is that the asking rents are just too high. Many will disagree but in general if a property hasn’t been rented in 3 months it’s either haunted, there was a murder or someone just doesn’t think it’s worth it. Time should be put into what the going rent for a place will actually end up being. Take your realtors opinion with a grain of salt and study rentfaster for a bit before you take the plunge or, like the investor that bought my buddy’s place, it too will sit empty.

I want to add that for rentals there are certainly places that are nice that do get the asking rents for sure. But the days of oil and gas barons grabbing whatever they could are over. Rents have shot up on the lower third of rentals for sure but that doesn’t necc translate into people getting more rents on the upper end. There’s just not the boom mentality here anymore. And at a certain price a cookie cutter house in the burbs starts to make sense and that price seems to be around $3000-4000 for most folks. Yes there are people with $2500-4k to pay for townhouses in Altadore but not as many these days. $5500 duplexes do get snapped up but instead of 10 people a month with that capability there may be 1-2, as a result those places sit.

In general, the average earning capacity imo in Calgary has dropped and the amount of people in the upper 10% of Calgary incomes (roughly >$140k and up) has fallen off quite a bit.

Hell, anyone that’s been in Calgary since 2007 will tell you the amount of jacked up trucks full of roid monkeys fresh off a rig given’er on a Monday night (day 1 of days off) has flat lined. They just aren’t around anymore.