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Suites and revenue property in Central Alberta
Six ways to own a rental here, what each one actually did over the last 90 days, and what the buildings around them rent for. Then one click into the MLS® listings.
Sales figures measured over the 90 days ending 1 September 2026. Rent and vacancy come from the CMHC Rental Market Survey, whose survey year is printed beside every number below. This page is built on a data pack dated 5 September 2026, and I refresh it by 16 October 2026.
Start with the question everybody asks first
“Which of these actually sells?” It is the right question, and the honest answer is that five of the six move steadily and one barely trades at all. Here is the whole table rather than the flattering half of it.
Four measures, defined before I lean on them
Median price — the middle of everything that sold. Half went for more, half for less. It is not the price of any particular home, and it moves when the mix of what sold changes, not only when values do.
Median days on market — how long the middle listing took to get an accepted offer, before any conditions came off.
Sale-to-list price — what the middle home sold for as a share of what it was asking on the day it sold.
Months of inventory — how long it would take to sell everything currently for sale at the pace of the last 90 days. Fewer months means fewer choices in front of a buyer. It is a directional read rather than an exact one, because the count of active listings is a snapshot.
| Classform & title | Sales90 days | Median priceof those sales | Median dayson market | Sale to listprice | Months ofinventory | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Townhousefreehold title | 6656 a year earlier | $335,500$328,950 | 2417 | 98.3%99.3% | 1.72.7 | Slight seller |
| Half duplexfreehold title | 6994 a year earlier | $340,000$354,250 | 2920 | 98.6%98.9% | 1.81.3 | Slight seller |
| Apartmentcondo title | 82107 a year earlier | $218,000$237,600 | 3920 | 97.5%98.2% | 2.41.7 | Balanced |
| Townhousecondo title | 5786 a year earlier | $239,900$277,000 | 2520 | 97.8%98.3% | 2.31.1 | Balanced |
| Half duplexcondo title | 1011 a year earlier | $415,000$414,900 | 3041 | 97.9%98.9% | 3.33.3 | Balanced |
| Full duplexboth sides, one title | 12 a year earlier | Too few sales in the window to measure. Every other figure on this row would be arithmetic rather than a measurement, so it is left blank rather than filled in. Whole duplexes come up a few times a year here, which is a reason to be on the lookout for one rather than to check once. | ||||
Base: closed MLS® sales across Red Deer, Lacombe, Blackfalds, Sylvan Lake, Innisfail and Olds in the 90 days ending 1 September 2026, against the same 90 days a year earlier. Sales, median price, days on market and sale-to-list price are read off closed transactions; months of inventory is a directional read. A class needs at least eight sales in the window before I will draw a conclusion from it — that is why the full duplex row is blank. Condo and freehold are split on registered title, and where the title was not stated the sale was left out rather than guessed, so these counts are a floor rather than a census. Medians throughout, never averages. Deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
The bigger point: the title tells you more than the building does
Look at the two half duplex rows. Same building shape — one shared wall, two homes — and from the street you often cannot tell them apart. But the freehold ones sold 69 times in those 90 days at 1.8 months of inventory, and the condo-titled ones sold 10 times at 3.3. They are not really the same product, and someone searching on the shape alone is looking at two different markets at once.
The practical difference is what you control. A freehold title means the roof, the yard and the furnace are yours to budget for and yours to schedule. A condo title means a monthly fee, a reserve fund and a board — less to arrange yourself, and a cost line you do not set. Neither is the better one. They suit different owners, and which one suits you is worth ten minutes on the phone before you shortlist anything.
Two more things worth naming from that table. Every measured class sold within about two and a half percent of its asking price — the spread runs from 97.5% to 98.6% — so right across the six, listings that were priced well were still getting close to what they asked. And the freehold townhouse was the only class where sales rose against a year earlier while months of inventory came down, while apartment condos carried the lowest entry median price at $218,000 and took the longest to sell, at a median 39 days on market.
What the rental side looks like
Two different sources sit below, and they are shown separately on purpose. One is a government survey of purpose-built apartment buildings. The other is what house-form rentals in Red Deer were asking this month. They describe different buildings, and they are not interchangeable.
Purpose-built apartment rents
CMHC survey · two-bedroomRead this one carefully. CMHC surveys non-subsidised rental buildings of three units or more — purpose-built apartments, not condominium apartments. The survey runs each October and publishes the following June, so it is never a current-month figure, and Blackfalds’ most recent published survey year is 2022. Source: CMHC Rental Market Survey, via the Government of Alberta’s Alberta Regional Dashboard.
House-form rentals, Red Deer
Asking rent · September 2026A different basis, so it is never added to the panel beside it. These are what landlords were asking in September 2026, not what a signed lease achieved, and each sits on nine listings. Source: Hearthstone Property Management and RentFaster.ca asking rents. Deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
The number you actually want is the one public data will not give you
Rent divided by price. Everybody wants it, and you cannot honestly build it out of the two panels above — because the rent survey measures purpose-built apartment buildings and the sales table measures condominiums and duplexes. Those are different buildings. Dividing one by the other produces a yield that looks authoritative and describes nothing.
The same goes for a basement suite. There is no public survey of what a legal secondary suite rents for in Central Alberta, so a figure quoted for one came from somewhere other than a measurement. What does exist is the rent roll on the actual building and the comparable leases around it, and that is what I work from when I underwrite a specific property for a client. Send me an address and that part takes one conversation.
Vacancy, with the range it sits inside
The most recent survey figure for each town, and beside it the ten-year average from the same survey. Both are here because one year on its own does not tell you what a town normally runs at.
| Town | Most recentapartment vacancy | Survey year | Ten-year averagesame survey | Series begins |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackfalds | 0.0% | 2024 | 4.3% | 2007 |
| Ponoka | 0.4% | 2025 | 4.4% | 2005 |
| Innisfail | 0.9% | 2025 | 4.0% | 2005 |
| Olds | 1.1% | 2025 | 4.3% | 2005 |
| Lacombe | 1.6% | 2025 | 6.0% | 2008 |
| Red Deer | 2.7% | 2022 | 6.5% | 1988 |
| Sylvan Lake | 2.8% | 2025 | 10.2% | 2008 |
Source: CMHC Rental Market Survey, via the Government of Alberta’s Alberta Regional Dashboard. The survey year is printed on every row because it is not the same year for every town — Red Deer’s most recent published figure is 2022 and Blackfalds’ is 2024, while the rest are 2025. Same universe as the rent panel above: purpose-built rental buildings of three or more units, not condominiums. Deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
The ten-year column is the one worth sitting with. Sylvan Lake’s most recent survey put apartment vacancy at 2.8%, and its ten-year average is 10.2% — a resort town’s rental market has always swung further than a town built on steady employers, and a plan built on one good year is a different plan from one built on the decade. That is a good reason to underwrite a particular building on its own rent roll rather than on a town-wide figure, and it is the kind of thing worth talking through before an offer goes in rather than after.
Two ways to own revenue property here — see what is listed today
Each of these is its own search, pooled right across Central Alberta rather than run town by town. That is deliberate: any single town turns up a handful of suited homes at a time, and a handful is not a shortlist. Each link opens my MLS® listing search in a new tab.
Houses with a suite
One title, two kitchens, two rents. A single family home with a secondary suite — the way most people here buy a first rental without buying a second property.
Browse suited homes →Half duplexes
Between them, the busiest thing on the table above. Freehold and condo titles both appear here — and as those two rows show, which one you are looking at matters more than the shape does.
Browse half duplexes →Whole buildings — fourplexes and up — work differently. Only a handful are listed across the whole region at any one time, too few to be worth sending you to a search page that would mostly be empty. They are also the ones that rarely sit long enough to be found by browsing. If that is what you are after, tell me and I will watch for it directly and call you when one comes up.
Thinking about a first rental, or adding to one you already own?
Everything above is the market as a whole. Whether a particular building works comes down to its real rent roll, its condition, its financing and what it costs you to hold — none of which a table can see. Send me the address and I will run the actual numbers on it.
Book a quick call — 587‑802‑1500 or text the same number, whichever is easier
Two things drive every number on this page from behind: the economy people earn in — oil, drilling and jobs, on Alberta’s economic engine — and what it costs to borrow, on Canada mortgage rate history. The wider market sits on Alberta home price trends.
Sources and method. Sales, median price, days on market, sale-to-list price and months of inventory are computed from closed MLS® sales across Red Deer, Lacombe, Blackfalds, Sylvan Lake, Innisfail and Olds over the 90 days ending 1 September 2026, compared against the same 90 days a year earlier. Medians throughout, never averages. Rent and vacancy are from the CMHC Rental Market Survey via the Government of Alberta’s Alberta Regional Dashboard, whose universe is non-subsidised rental buildings of three or more units — purpose-built apartments rather than condominiums — surveyed each October and published the following June, with the survey year printed beside every figure. Red Deer asking rents are from Hearthstone Property Management and RentFaster.ca. Ponoka appears in the rent and vacancy tables but not the sales table, because the sales measurement covers the six towns named above.
As of. Built from a data pack generated 5 September 2026. I refresh it by 16 October 2026 — if you are reading this after that date and the page has not moved, call and I will give you the current figures.
All figures deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Nothing here is a valuation of any particular property, and nothing here is a forecast: every number on this page describes a period that has already happened.
Jay Kern, REALTOR® · Kern Realty | CIR Realty