With a slow summer in an already soft real estate market, where can Calgary home buyers find the deepest discounts off asking prices?
New HouseSigma data shows that the typical Greater Calgary home sold for 2.29% below its final asking price in August, a saving of about $11,900. Roughly 85% of all sales closed below list (see infographic, below).
However, that “typical” discount hides a lot of variation. Which homes offered buyers the most room depends on whether the discount is counted as a percentage or in dollars, and the two measures point in opposite directions.
Browse homes for sale near you Updated continuously from MLS feeds across Canada — filter for your price range and home specificationsPercentage discounts: cheapest homes
Homes listed under $400,000 sold at a median of 3.36% below asking, the deepest proportional discount of any price band. The shallowest was in the middle of the market, between $600,000 and $800,000, at 1.85%.
The full set of bands:
- Under $400,000: 3.36% below asking
- $400,000 to $600,000: 2.14%
- $600,000 to $800,000: 1.85%
- $800,000 to $1 million: 2.06%
- $1 million to $1.5 million: 1.96%
- Above $1.5 million: 2.61%
Both ends of the price range gave up more proportionally than the middle did. The middle bands were the also the ones to see the lowest average number of days on market, which previous reports have shown affects negotiating power.
Dollar discounts: more on expensive homes
In cash terms, the pattern is simpler, and it rises steadily with price:
- Under $400,000: $9,900 off asking
- $400,000 to $600,000: $10,000
- $600,000 to $800,000: $12,800
- $800,000 to $1 million: $18,694
- $1 million to $1.5 million: $25,000
- Above $1.5 million: $50,000
A buyer above $1.5 million negotiated five times as much money off the asking price as a buyer under $400,000, even though the percentage gap between those two bands is well under one point.
Discounts by home type
Condo apartments carried the deepest percentage discount of the three types in August, at 3.44% below asking, against 2.06% for detached homes and 2.05% for attached homes.
The median condo sold $10,000 below asking and the median attached home the same, while the median detached home sold $14,900 below.
Where competition was thinnest
Discounts are easier to win where nobody else is bidding, and in August that was the bottom of the market.
Among homes listed under $400,000, just 4.5% sold above asking and 92% sold below. Between $1 million and $1.5 million, 16% sold above asking and 74.7% below. A listing above $1 million was more than three times as likely to draw a bid over asking as one below $400,000.
Some of that is down to property type, since the cheapest band is mostly condos. But the pattern holds within a single type. Among detached houses alone, 84.6% of those listed under $500,000 sold below asking, against 77.2% of those listed above $1.2 million.
The Calgary Real Estate Board noted a related split in its August release, reporting year-over-year sales gains in the $1 million and above segment while lower price ranges did not pick up.
Median sale prices by home type
The overall median sale price across Greater Calgary was $575,000 in August, up 0.2% from July and 0.5% from August last year.
- Detached homes came in at a median sale price of $694,950, up 0.7% over July and up 0.9% on last August.
- Attached homes sat at $469,900, up 1.5% over July but down 3.8% on last August.
- Condo apartments fell to $285,750, down 1.5% over July and down 9.3% on last August.
The month’s outlier sales
Four August home sales landed furthest from their asking prices, at opposite ends of the price ladder.
The largest percentage premium came from the cheapest end. A three-bedroom 1978 bungalow in Calgary was listed at $349,900 and sold for $453,000, or 29.5% above asking.
The largest dollar premium came from the more expensive end. A four-bedroom Elbow Park home built in 2003 was listed at $1,899,000 and sold for $2,125,000, a premium of $226,000.
The largest percentage discount was an acreage. A three-bedroom bungalow on 10 acres in Rural Rocky View County was listed at $1,150,000 and sold for $930,000, or 19.1% below asking.
The largest dollar discount was also a rural home, this one a massive, near-18,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom home on a huge estate with spectacular mountain views. It came down $350,000 from a $3,350,000 asking price to sell at $3,000,000 on the nose.
What it all means for buyers and sellers
For buyers, the answer to where the discounts are depends on what is being bought: condo and entry-level buyers are operating in the least competitive part of the market, with 19 homes in 20 selling below list price in the under-$400K band. That said, the money saved is modest because the prices are low to begin with. On the other hand, buyers above $1 million face a lot more competition, yet they negotiate far larger sums off the asking price when they succeed.
For sellers, the figure to plan around is the dollar reduction rather than the percentage, since listings at both the top and the bottom of the market have been settling further below asking than those in the middle.
Check out the full Calgary August 2026 PriceWatch infographic below for more details and breakdowns by area and property type. Mouseover or touch the price chart points to reveal the full data.
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