Airbnb or Long-Term Tenant? What Calgary Rentals Actually Earn

The Vacancy Question Everyone Asks

The only true vacancy rate that exists for Calgary is CMHC's October survey of purpose-built rentals, and it's published city-wide only. It tells a story on its own: vacancy collapsed to 1.4% in 2023 — the tightest reading in our data, which starts in 2018 — then a wave of new supply pushed it back to 5% in 2025, above the ~3% that industry rules of thumb call balanced. The city as a whole now leans renter-friendly. Two-bedroom townhouses — the only townhouse series CMHC publishes — stay tighter, at 2%: family-sized rentals remain the scarcest part of the market.

A city average hides what matters to a landlord: in some communities half of new listings are gone within three weeks, in others they sit for two months. That community-level speed is what this page measures.

Where Long-Term Rentals Move Fastest

We track Calgary's public rental listings weekly — about 5.6k active listings at a time — and watch each one until it disappears, which most often means it leased (some are withdrawn or expire, and we count that honestly in the methodology below). Across 16,664 listings we watched from their first appearance, half were gone within 5 weeks, and 24.7% within two — counting the listings still sitting on the market, not just the ones that moved.

The spread between communities is the story. In Willow Park, half of new listings are gone within 3 weeks and 48.7% vanish within two — a landlord's market whatever the city average says, though that reads on 22 tracked departures, so treat the exact ranking as a signal rather than a verdict.

The slow end matters just as much if you're buying: in Creekstone, Forest Heights and Pineridge, it takes 8 weeks or more for half of new listings to move. The slow list is a mix — brand-new suburbs where investor-owned homes hit the rental market faster than tenants arrive, and older pockets where demand is simply thin — worth checking before buying anywhere for rental income.

The Short-Term Side

Calgary's Airbnb market is 4,521 active listings (hotels, B&Bs, and 28-night-minimum listings excluded) — against 3,721 active short-term-rental business licences on the city registry. The median listing charges $156 a night — averaged across our weekly observations since February, so Stampede-season pricing doesn't inflate it — and has 33% of its next twelve months already booked or blocked.

One honest caveat before the table: a public Airbnb calendar can't distinguish a booked night from one the host blocked off. So "calendar booked/blocked" runs hotter than true occupancy, and the revenue estimates built on it are an upper bound, before costs — cleaning, management, insurance, licensing. We show them anyway: the community-to-community comparison should mostly hold, as long as hosts across communities block their calendars at broadly similar rates.

Head-to-Head: Same Unit, Two Strategies

Where we have enough data on both sides — 97 community-and-size matchups — we can put the two strategies against each other directly. The cleanest way to read it is break-even occupancy: how many nights an Airbnb must fill, at that community's going nightly rate, to match the long-term rent. This is a gross break-even — it doesn't net out an operator's own costs (cleaning, utilities, insurance, management), which vary too much to assume. Your real break-even is higher, so treat these as the optimistic edge and factor your own costs in for a complete picture.

Take Mission: the going asking rate for a 1-bed long-term is about $1,550 a month. The median 1-bed Airbnb there charges $190 a night — so it matches the lease at just 27% occupancy, and its calendar shows 72% of the next year already booked or blocked. Worth knowing: that comparison rests on 7 Airbnb listings and 37 rental listings — real data, small sample.

Run your own community and unit → Pick any community, property type, and size and see the long-term rent, the Airbnb gross, and the break-even side by side.

Where the Lease Wins

The premium is not universal. In 53 of 97 matchups the Airbnb's estimated gross barely matches or falls below the long-term rent — and since the Airbnb number is gross and optimistic, the lease wins those on net with none of the turnover work. The list is an even mix: newer suburbs where Airbnb supply outruns visiting demand, and quieter established neighbourhoods where nightly rates are too modest to beat a lease.

And a community median hides a second story: spread. In Livingston — the city's biggest Airbnb market at 202 listings — the bottom quarter of calendars sit 84% open while the top quarter run 65%+ booked or blocked. Oversupplied markets aren't uniformly bad; they're winners-and-losers markets, and the average tells you nothing about which one you'd be.

If You're Buying for Rental Income

For a pure long-term play, the data points to Willow Park, Signal Hill, Millrise, Chaparral, Belvedere and Midnapore — half of new listings there are gone within three to four weeks, with enough listing volume to trust the read. For a pure short-term play, Mission, Downtown Commercial Core, Glendale, Kingsland, Hillhurst and Lower Mount Royal earn the most per Airbnb listing, with calendars already running well above break-even.

The most interesting list is the overlap: Mission, Kingsland, Aspen Woods, Ramsay, Currie Barracks and Scenic Acres are strong on both sides. A property there isn't a bet on one strategy — it can run as an Airbnb, and if regulation, seasonality, or the owner's patience changes, the long-term market absorbs it in weeks. That flexibility shows up in no single statistic, but it's real.

One honest limit before you act on any of this: everything above is about rent and how fast it moves — the demand side. It says nothing about what you'd pay to own the property. A community where rentals move fast can still be a mediocre buy if prices are steep, and a slower community can be the better yield if you get in cheap. Return is rent relative to price, and that's a different map. The follow-on post walks it: which communities actually pay back the most per dollar of assessed value, and whether new supply is about to compete it away.

Scouting to buy? Open the market explorer → Rents, gross yields on assessed value, and the supply pipeline, ranked by community.

This is market data, not financial advice — and every number here is a snapshot that this page will keep updating as the weekly data accumulates.