Alberta

Calgary posted the highest overall returns for commercial real estate investors last year, with an average 21.6 per cent return, according to the REALpac / IPD Canada Annual Property Index. Edmonton (13.

Alberta landlords appear confident that they will not be facing rent controls, despite what appears to be sharp left turn by the province’s Conservative government.

Cash-heavy Cold Lake, considered the number two oil sands community in Alberta, is poised to become a white-hot market for residential landlords this year. Pub and restaurant owners should also feel the heat.

The City of Spruce Grove has approved a key new development and a necessary land sale to accommodate it. The $30-million development, known as Tri Village Commons, is adjacent to the Edmonton suburb's popular TransAlta Tri Leisure Centre.

The southern Alberta town of High River grew significantly on January 1.

While urban municipalities are expanding, the oil and gas industry in Alberta continues to gobble up the rights for oil and gas deposits in the province - and to pay significantly for those rights.

The City of St. Albert wants to actively pursue with landowners the development of designated industrial lands in the southwest and southeast corners of the city, to accommodate industrial growth for the next several years. But there is a hitch.

Building activity in Red Deer remained in bounce-back mode for 2011.

The central Alberta city of Wetaskiwin, known as the car-buying capital of Alberta, has rolled closer to a fancy new aquatic centre, but not without agreeing to take on more debt.

With large investors buying apartment blocks, the rental vacancy falling and the oil-fired city economy booming, developers have started or built more than 1,800 new rental apartments in Edmonton in the past year.