Calgary’s overall retail availability rate increased during the first quarter of 2024, reaching 4.3%. This level of available space has Calgary approaching what we consider to be a balanced market; there is a variety of options for would-be tenants and existing tenants alike which is allowing rental rates to stabilize after several quarters of increases. Calgary experienced overall availability in this 4.5%–5.5% range in the not-too-distant past, when the closure of Sears Canada put 650,000 square feet of retail space on the market in Q1 2018. Availability increased to 5.1% in that quarter but by year-end, overall availably had dropped to 4.6% and remained in the low-to-mid 4% range through 2019.
