Office vacancy, and what the public record can actually show.
No statistical agency publishes office vacancy, availability or absorption. The City of Calgary does publish the typical vacancy its assessors apply to each class of office building, which is the closest official figure. Here is what that figure is, and every adjacent measure that is openly published, each labelled for what it can and cannot establish.
The direct answer
Stated plainly, because the question deserves one.
Statistics Canada and the federal open data catalogue carry no office vacancy or absorption series. The closest official figure is The City of Calgary’s. Each year its assessment business unit publishes an Office Market Trends report explaining how office buildings are valued for property tax, and the report sets out the typical vacancy rate the assessors applied to each downtown, Beltline and suburban zone and each quality class, as at the July 1 valuation date, alongside typical rents, operating costs and capitalization rates.
That rate is an assessment parameter, not a market survey. The City derives it from the share of inventory in each category that was not leased on the valuation date, using lease information owners return in its annual Assessment Request for Information, or substitutes a stabilized rate, and it also reviews industry market reports. It is applied to every building in a category regardless of that building’s actual occupancy, and it describes the market as it stood on the valuation date, not today.
The City’s terms of use do not permit its website content to be copied or redistributed without written permission, so this site links to the report rather than reproducing it. Vacancy rates from commercial firms’ private canvasses are not reproduced either.
What follows is the openly licensed record. None of it is a vacancy rate, and none of it is presented as one.
Is downtown being used?
The City’s own count of people entering the core.
The City counts everyone crossing a ring of screenlines around the core on a single spring weekday. Inbound movement peaked at 341,895 in 2019, fell to 187,587 at its lowest, and stood at 315,453 in 2023. Transit specifically went from 112,255 to 104,552.
What this can and cannot establish. It shows whether downtown is being used. It is a one-day count, not an annual average, and it says nothing about how much space is leased, empty or available. There is no 2020 count, and the 2017 to 2023 releases before 2017 publish screenline locations without counts.
Central Business District Cordon Count, The City of Calgary. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary.
How much space was added, and removed?
Additions measured exactly by City permits; removals bounded by Statistics Canada conversion permits.
New construction is the one side of the vacancy equation the public record measures exactly. Across 7 years to 2018 the City issued 286 office building permits in its New work class, an average of 41 a year. Across the 8 years since, it issued 37, an average of 4.6 a year. 63 of the 822 sites in this record carry a construction year of 2015 or later on the assessment roll.
What this can and cannot establish. It establishes that almost no new office space has been permitted in Calgary since 2018, which bounds how much inventory can have been added. It does not establish how much was removed: conversions to residential and demolitions are not counted in these City permits, and both reduce inventory.
The removal side: buildings converted to homes
Statistics Canada counts building permits that convert non-residential buildings to residential use. In the Calgary metropolitan area they created 109 homes across 5 years to 2022, then 182 in 2023, 815 in 2024 and 1,085 in 2025. In the 12 months to July 2026 they created 1,369.
What this can and cannot establish. It is the closest public measure of space leaving the non-residential stock, and in Calgary it has risen sharply since 2023. It counts every non-residential building type converted to residential use, not office buildings alone, and it counts homes created, not office floor area removed. See Calgary office construction activity.
Statistics Canada, table 34-10-0292-01, Building permits, by type of structure and type of work, Statistics Canada Open Licence.
The one real occupancy record
Published by the owner of the buildings it covers.
One Canadian public dataset does record occupancy building by building, and it is the federal government’s own. The Directory of Federal Real Property marks each structure complete or partial: nationally 2,129 complete and 1,100 partial across 3,229 federal office buildings, and in Calgary 10 complete against 22 partial across 32 buildings.
What this can and cannot establish. It is real per-building occupancy, published by the owner, and it is the only such record in Canadian public data. It covers federal holdings alone, so it describes one occupier and cannot be generalised to the market. See the federal record.
What the assessment roll shows
Taxation figures, not market values, but the scale is real.
Across 672 comparable sites, assessed value fell from $29.74B in 2015 to $9.38B in 2026. Inside the downtown core the median site changed by -64.1%; outside it, -34.2%. Within downtown the fall is graded by height, from -19.5% under 15 m to -81.7% above 100 m.
What this can and cannot establish. Assessed values are The City of Calgary’s figures for taxation, not sale prices, rents or market values, and Alberta does not publish transaction prices. A fall in assessment is not a measurement of vacancy. See the full assessment cycle.
How a real rate gets made
And how this record could carry one.
Vacancy is produced, not looked up. It needs a dated inventory denominator and a vacant area for each building. This record already provides the denominator: every office-assessed parcel in Calgary, 822 sites with measured footprints, storey counts and parcel areas from City LiDAR and the assessment roll.
The missing half is what is leased and what is not, which only the people who own and manage the buildings know. If you own or manage a Calgary office building, you can put its current availability into this record. Anything published would be dated, attributed and shown with its coverage as a share of inventory by floor area, in the same way the curated building inclusions on this site already state their basis.
Questions
What can and cannot be sourced.
What is the Calgary office vacancy rate?
No statistical agency publishes one. The closest official figure is The City of Calgary’s own: its annual Office Market Trends report lists the typical vacancy rate its assessors applied to each downtown, Beltline and suburban zone and quality class at the July 1 valuation date. It is a parameter for valuing buildings for property tax, applied to every building in a class regardless of its actual occupancy, and it should be read at the source. Rates quoted by commercial firms come from their own private canvasses and are not reproduced here.
Why are the City’s figures not shown on this page?
Because The City of Calgary’s website terms of use do not permit its contents to be copied, repackaged or redistributed without express written permission. This page explains what the figure is and links to the report instead. Everything charted on this site comes from datasets published under an open licence.
How thoroughly was that checked?
The full Statistics Canada cube catalogue was downloaded and every one of its 8,258 tables was scanned for vacancy, absorption, commercial rent and office floor space. Every match is either job vacancies from the Labour Force Survey and the Job Vacancy and Wage Survey, or residential apartment vacancy and absorptions of newly completed dwellings from CMHC. The federal open data catalogue was searched as well. There is no office vacancy series in either. The City of Calgary’s assessment figures sit in its published office assessment report, not in any open data catalogue, which is why a catalogue search does not find them.
What would it take to publish a building-level one?
A canvass. The City’s assessment rate is a typical figure for a whole class of buildings, built from lease information owners return to the assessor, which is confidential. A rate for a particular building or submarket has to be produced by asking building by building what is leased and what is not. A defensible rate needs a dated inventory denominator, which this record already provides for every office-assessed parcel in Calgary, plus a vacant area for each building, gathered from owners and managers and labelled with its source and date. Any rate published here would state its coverage openly, as a share of inventory by floor area.
Is assessed value a proxy for vacancy?
Not directly, and it should not be presented as one. The City values office buildings for taxation, and its figures move with income expectations among other things. What the roll does show is the scale of the change: across 672 comparable sites assessed value fell from $29.74B to $9.38B between 2015 and 2026, and the downtown core median fell -64.1% while the rest of the city moved -34.2%.
Is anything measuring office space being removed?
Partly. Statistics Canada publishes monthly building permits that convert non-residential buildings to residential use, by metropolitan area, and in Calgary those permits have created far more homes since 2023 than in any earlier year of the series. The series covers every non-residential building type rather than offices alone, and it counts homes created rather than office floor area removed, so it bounds the removal side rather than measuring it.
Do permits show absorption?
They show supply, not absorption. Absorption is the change in occupied space, which needs an occupancy measure at two dates. Permits establish how much new space was authorised, and tenant-improvement permits and inspections show where work is happening, but neither says whether a floor is occupied.
Public record sources: Current Year Property Assessments (Parcel), Historical Property Assessments (Parcel), Assessment Subproperty Use Codes, 3D Buildings - Citywide (LiDAR roof outlines), Land Use Districts, Transit LRT Stations, Green Line Stations, Plus 15, Historic Resource (Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources), Development Permits, Building Permits, Calgary Existing Buildings - Performance Metrics (BenchmarkYYC), Calgary Business Licenses, On-Street Parking Zones with Rates, Building Inspections Results, Residential Parking Zones, Snow and Ice Clearing Priority Routes, Traffic Signals, Calgary Bikeways — The City of Calgary, retrieved 2026-09-24. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary. Building names, floor counts and architects, where shown, come from Wikidata (CC0). No brokerage, listing-data or commercial research source is used.
Boundary: Assessed values are the City’s assessment-roll figures for taxation and are not sale prices, asking rents, vacancy or availability; Alberta does not publish transaction prices. LiDAR heights are roof-surface elevations above the lowest ground point at the building perimeter and can differ from architectural heights. Storey equivalents are derived at 3.9 m per storey and are not floor counts. Distances are straight-line. Permit descriptions are the City’s records at retrieval and do not establish current use, tenancy or availability. Read the methodology.