Why Ontario buyers are scooping up investment properties in Calgary

The days of Alberta bleeding residents to other provinces are gone, at least for now. In the second quarter alone, the province saw a net gain of about 10,000 people thanks to moves from other parts of the country, especially from Ontario.

But people aren't just moving themselves and their families to Alberta — a high number are moving their money. 

In recent years, Calgary has seen a spike in out-of-province homebuyers scooping up investment properties they can rent out, with the primary motivator being comparatively cheap real estate.

"Prices in Toronto and those other cities are completely out of reach, not just for end users but for investors as well," said Kyle Dovigi, a Toronto-based real estate broker who markets himself as the "Condo Millionaire" and who deals primarily in investment properties. 

"So people look outside of their markets [and] Calgary is a very, very appealing market."

And depending on whether you're an investor, a renter or a buyer, the phenomenon may mean different things for your bottom line.

On the one hand, out-of-province real estate speculation has the potential to drive up prices for would-be homebuyers who actually live in Calgary.

On the other, the trend could be viewed as a vote of confidence in the Alberta economy — and a source of much-needed rental properties in an increasingly tight market. 

The influx of out-of-province investment began just before the pandemic, right as the Calgary economy began to recover from the 2014 oil crash and rents started to rise. 

"Just before COVID, [in] 2019, I [was] first starting to see the trickling of investors, and then that slowly started to speed up," said Natasha Phipps, an investment specialist Realtor with CIR Realty in Calgary.

"[By the] spring of 2022, I felt like we were having, like, planefuls of people coming from Ontario to invest in Alberta," said Phipps, who said about three quarters of her sales in the last year have been from out-of-province buyers — and she was fielding a call from a Toronto area code during an interview with CBC News. 

Even as home prices in Calgary have risen, it's remained more affordable to buy a Calgary condo than in other major cities, she said. And it's also more likely that investors can cover their expenses through rent without having to fork out a chunk of cash every month from their own pockets.

"In many other Canadian markets that's just not possible anymore," she said.

In Calgary, the average condo sale price is about $297,000, whereas it's just over $720,000 in the Toronto region and $769,000 in the Metro Vancouver area, according to the regions' local real estate boards.