Alberta

Major oil companies shoving excess space onto the market has nearly doubled Calgary’s downtown office vacancy rate and help notch four straight quarters of negative office leasing downtown. During 2013, overall absorption was negative by 1.

Alberta's population has officially topped the 4 million mark. Statistics Canada counted 4,025,074 Albertans as of July 1.

The Calgary satellites of Airdrie, Cochrane and Okotoks all recorded the highest third-quarter sales activity on record in September, mostly as a result of gains in the single-family home sector, reports the Calgary Real Estate Board.

An Asian-style mega-mall – where space will be sold, not leased – is expected to join the industrial and commercial horizon of Balzac, just north of Calgary.

Edmonton posted $1.6 billion in commercial real estate sales in the first half of 2013, up almost $350 million from the same period in 2012 but still far below the heady days before the 2008 recession.

Giant retailer Costco opened a 155,000-square-foot store in St. Albert on October 24 as part of the Landrex Developers mixed-use development in Erin Ridge North.

Seen as a harbinger of future development, land sales have become the dominant driver in Calgary's commercial real estate sector, with sales topping a whopping average of $150 million per month this year.

The Red Deer industrial real estate inventory grew by about 3.1 per cent last year to more than 12.5 million square feet, but that growth didn't increase the vacancy rate.

Last month, Jeff McGinley, principal of Avison Young, took time from touring representatives of three major U.S. retail clients through Calgary’s “aggressive” retail scene to remark on their jaw-dropping response. Most U.S.

Seen as a harbinger of future development, land sales have become the dominant driver in Calgary’s commercial real estate sector, with sales topping a whopping average of $150 million per month this year.