Realtors’ association expects Edmonton housing market to be balanced in 2026

"For sale" signs in Edmonton on Aug. 1, 2025. (Nicole Weisberg/CTV News Edmonton)

Edmonton’s housing market is “more balanced and sustainable” as it enters 2026, the chair for the group representing the city’s realtors said Thursday.

Darlene Reid, chair for the Realtors’ Association of Edmonton, said home buyers and sellers can expect to see a shift towards a more moderate real-estate market that favours neither side, a trend that started last year as new housing inventory and the number of listings increased.

“Edmonton continues to stand out for its affordability, steady population growth and expanding housing supply,” Reid told media at the Edmonton Expo Centre, where the association presented its annual housing forecast on Thursday morning. “That combination supports stability, choice and opportunity for buyers and sellers alike as we move through the year ahead.”

• Download our app to get Edmonton alerts on your device

The association’s forecast is based on year-end statistics and analysis.

“Edmonton has some great advantages; one is with development costs,” Reid said. “Edmonton’s development cost is around four per cent when you compare that to markets like Ontario, (where) development costs are 36 per cent, so Edmonton has a lot of advantage to keep our house pricing down with development costs and our great economy here.”

Among the key numbers for 2026, the realtors’ association forecasts:

• total residential sales in 2026 will be 25,470 units, a decrease of five per cent from last year, “but still significantly higher than Edmonton’s long-term average, which remains typically between 18,000 and 22,000 units,” Reid said;
• the overall average price across all types of housing to increase modestly, to an average of $464,000 or about 1.3-per-cent higher than last year;
• the sale of 15,180 detached homes with an average price of about $575,000, a price increase of one per cent from last year;
• a slight increase in the number of semi-detached homes sold at 2,840 units at an average price of $430,000, unchanged from last year;
• about 3,600 row houses selling at an average price of $301,000, a decrease in price of 1.2 per cent;
• about 3,800 sales of condos with a four-per-cent drop in prices for them to an average of $203,000; and
• the number of new listings to reach 42,050, a minor increase of 0.3 per cent from last year. About 24,600 of those will be detached homes, Reid said.

Stability and affordability are watchwords Reid uses for 2026 and the Edmonton real-estate market.

“We’re still predicting some price increases, just very moderate increases, so pretty much stable from last year,” she said. “Even last year, we saw the inventory (go) up, the number of sales went down, but our price still held and even went up a little bit, so we’re predicting the same. Population growth does impact the demand, so we’re expecting less demand, but we still are predicting prices to continue to rise slightly.”