Calgary Housing Market Update: May 2023
The busiest May in at least a decade, barely a month of supply left on the shelf, and prices rising again despite the highest mortgage rates in fifteen years.
In May 2023 Calgary set a sales record: 3,117 homes sold, the most of any May since at least 2014 and up 16% from April. The benchmark price rose to $552,700, up 1.4% on the month and 1.2% above a year earlier — the first clear annual gain since prices peaked in 2022. The real story was supply. Inventory fell to 3,214 homes, down 38% from last May, leaving just 1.0 month of supply. Every property type sat under 1.3 months, and a typical home sold in 24 days.
May 2023 at a glance
Calgary sold more homes in May 2023 than in any May in at least a decade — 3,117 of them — and did it while mortgage rates sat at their highest level in fifteen years. That looked contradictory at the time and made more sense the closer you looked at supply. Only 3,650 new listings came to market, 15% fewer than last May, and total inventory finished the month at 3,214 homes, down more than a third year-over-year. With barely a single month of supply, the constraint on Calgary’s market wasn’t buyers. It was that almost nothing was for sale.
Calgary prices over time
| Year | Benchmark price | Change on the year |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $459,500 | — |
| 2015 | $448,800 | ▼ -2.3% |
| 2016 | $434,100 | ▼ -3.3% |
| 2017 | $433,200 | ▼ -0.2% |
| 2018 | $424,600 | ▼ -2% |
| 2019 | $415,900 | ▼ -2% |
| 2020 | $421,300 | ▲ +1.3% |
| 2021 | $463,900 | ▲ +10.1% |
| 2022 | $518,800 | ▲ +11.8% |
| 2023 (to May) | $552,700 | ▲ +6.5% |
Sales, listings and inventory
| Month | Sales | New listings | Inventory | Days on market | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2022 | 2,839 | 4,055 | 5,404 | 27 | $543,900 |
| July 2022 | 2,249 | 3,178 | 5,343 | 31 | $539,900 |
| August 2022 | 2,133 | 2,718 | 4,783 | 35 | $531,800 |
| September 2022 | 1,894 | 2,626 | 4,461 | 39 | $527,400 |
| October 2022 | 1,857 | 2,174 | 3,889 | 40 | $523,900 |
| November 2022 | 1,642 | 1,611 | 3,116 | 40 | $520,200 |
| December 2022 | 1,201 | 1,032 | 2,222 | 46 | $518,800 |
| January 2023 | 1,198 | 1,852 | 2,451 | 42 | $516,300 |
| February 2023 | 1,737 | 2,386 | 2,747 | 33 | $526,500 |
| March 2023 | 2,424 | 3,314 | 3,235 | 27 | $535,100 |
| April 2023 | 2,686 | 3,132 | 3,234 | 24 | $545,100 |
| May 2023 | 3,117 | 3,650 | 3,214 | 24 | $552,700 |
The headline numbers
| Metric | May 2023 | vs prev month | vs last year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benchmark price | $552,700 | ▲ +1.4% | ▲ +1.2% |
| Sales | 3,117 | ▲ +16% | ▲ +1.8% |
| New listings | 3,650 | ▲ +16.5% | ▼ -15.1% |
| Inventory | 3,214 | ▼ -0.6% | ▼ -38.4% |
| Days on market | 24 | — 0 days | ▼ -1 day |
A look by property type
| Property type | Benchmark | vs last year | Sales | Days on mkt | Months of supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | $674,000 | ▲ +3.9% | 1,485 | 22 | 1.0 |
| Semi-detached | $598,700 | ▲ +2.4% | 279 | 25 | 0.8 |
| Row / townhouse | $387,800 | ▲ +6.7% | 496 | 20 | 0.8 |
| Apartment condo | $288,900 | ▲ +4.9% | 857 | 29 | 1.3 |
One month of supply is not a normal market
Months of supply is the cleanest read on who holds the leverage: inventory divided by the month’s sales, or how long the current stock would last if nothing new were listed. Four to six months is balanced. Calgary finished May 2023 at 1.0.
It was tight everywhere, not just in one segment. Row homes and semi-detached sat at 0.8 months, detached at 1.0, and even apartment condos — the part of the market that had spent years as Calgary’s soft spot — had tightened to 1.3.
Why so few people were selling
The shortage was a rate story as much as a housing story. Anyone holding a mortgage arranged in 2020 or 2021 was sitting on a rate far below what a new loan would cost them, and moving meant giving that up. So they stayed put, and their homes never reached the market.
That happened at exactly the moment interprovincial migration was pushing Calgary’s population up sharply, with buyers arriving from more expensive provinces and finding Calgary’s prices reasonable by comparison. Fewer sellers, more buyers — the squeeze was structural, not a blip.
Prices turned back up
The benchmark price of $552,700 was up 1.4% on the month and 1.2% year-over-year — the first clean annual gain after the slide that followed the 2022 peak. The recovery was broad rather than concentrated: row homes led at 6.7% year-over-year, apartment condos rose 4.9%, detached homes 3.9% and semi-detached 2.4%.
Notice the order. The most affordable segments were rising fastest, which is what you’d expect when higher rates push buyers down the price ladder rather than out of the market altogether.
What this meant if you were buying
This was a hard market to buy in, and pretending otherwise wouldn’t have helped anyone. At 24 days on market and one month of supply, well-priced homes went quickly and often above asking. The buyers who succeeded had financing genuinely sorted in advance — not just a rate hold, but a file that had actually been reviewed.
It was also a market where the affordability maths had shifted under everyone’s feet. A payment that bought a certain home in 2021 bought noticeably less by 2023, and the qualifying rate — the stress test — was higher than the rate you would actually pay. Knowing the specific number you qualified for, rather than the number you hoped for, was the whole game.
Frequently asked questions
Buying in a tight market?
When homes sell in 24 days, having your financing genuinely sorted is what separates an accepted offer from a missed one. Let’s get your numbers straight first.
Try our mortgage calculator →Ready to start? Apply online in minutes
Source: CREB, May 2023 (City of Calgary geography). Prices shown are benchmark (HPI) values. Month-over-month compares to the prior month; year-over-year to the same month last year. The board may revise past months as late sales are recorded. Prepared by Mortgages for Less.
