New report from CBRE Limited shows that the number of commercial vacancies in downtown Calgary remains high.
At the end of 2025, the overall vacancy rate in the city center will be 30.4%.
Michael Hoffman, vice president and managing director of CBRE Limited, says turbulence in the oil and gas sector continues to impact the real estate market.
“M&A activity in the oil and gas sector has resulted in a large amount of subleased space,” Hoffman explained. “So, there are vacancies in the market as companies are acquired and they don’t need as much office space downtown.”
According to the report, net leasable space in the city center is just over 41 million square feet, and more space is needed.
The commercial vacancy rate in downtown Calgary remains at 30%.
CBRE Limited
“We're seeing a struggle for quality,” Hoffman noted. “So our Class A buildings outperform Class B and Class C tenants.”
Overall, changes are happening and Calgarians should accept this as the new normal, says Calgary Economic Development CEO Brad Parry.
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“We're not going to see people come in and take a million square feet off the market in one fell swoop,” Parry said. “You'll see little pieces of ten thousand square feet, twenty, thirty, fifty thousand square feet begin to slowly destroy it.”
Net absorption in Calgary improved significantly in the fourth quarter of 2025.
CBRE Limited
Programs like Calgary's Downtown Office Conversion Program have taken some of these less desirable buildings, with the ultimate goal of converting 6 million square feet of underutilized office space by 2031.
“The city has created the right incentives to attract capital to help transform these buildings,” Parry said, “by removing some of the lower grade buildings and bringing that vibrancy back into the downtown area. And I think we're starting to see the fruits of those programs starting to bear fruit.”
Interprovincial and international migration has decreased significantly.
Government of Alberta
Meanwhile, recent changes in immigration policy have ended interruptions in interprovincial and international migration. Alberta Economic Dashboard shows that only Alberta and Prince Edward Island saw positive net migration, with 5,849 people moving to Alberta in the third quarter, compared to 42,311 in the same quarter of 2024.
“We think this is a market rebalancing,” Parry said. “This gives him a chance to take a breath, get back into housing, get back into some of the other services that we need.”
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