Calgary · Declared construction value
Declared construction value in Calgary
When work needs a building permit, the City requires the applicant to declare what it is worth and publishes that declaration. Across 24,107 permits from 1999 to 2026 those declarations total $75.74B in nominal dollars. This is a figure supplied at application for permit purposes — not investment, not spending, and not an outturn cost.
What this number is, and four things it is not
A building permit applicant declares the value of the proposed work and the City publishes the declaration. That is the entire provenance: an official structured field, supplied by the applicant, used to assess permit fees.
- Not investment. Filing a permit commits no capital.
- Not spending. No money has moved.
- Not construction cost. A figure declared at application is not what the work finally cost, and the municipal record never revisits it.
- Not a market size. It measures permitted work — not property value, land value or transaction volume.
Two properties change every total on this page. The dollars are nominal. No inflation adjustment is applied because no price index has been ingested, so a 1999 dollar and a 2026 dollar are summed as equals here and they are not. And the distribution is extreme: the median permit declares $850K while the largest declares $868.3M. A mean would describe almost nothing, so the median, the total and the bands below are published together.
By year
Show the underlying data table
| Category | $M |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 398 |
| 2000 | 1,081 |
| 2001 | 883 |
| 2002 | 897 |
| 2003 | 1,133 |
| 2004 | 1,029 |
| 2005 | 1,927 |
| 2006 | 2,985 |
| 2007 | 3,928 |
| 2008 | 2,808 |
| 2009 | 2,220 |
| 2010 | 1,317 |
| 2011 | 2,839 |
| 2012 | 2,466 |
| 2013 | 3,804 |
| 2014 | 4,207 |
| 2015 | 4,515 |
| 2016 | 2,875 |
| 2017 | 2,735 |
| 2018 | 2,772 |
| 2019 | 3,190 |
| 2020 | 1,763 |
| 2021 | 3,145 |
| 2022 | 3,250 |
| 2023 | 3,266 |
| 2024 | 5,937 |
| 2025 | 4,452 |
| 2026 | 3,920 |
The last complete year, 2025, carried $4.45B across 1,349 permits, against $5.94B in 2024. Both figures are nominal. A change of this kind can be one large permit as easily as a broad shift — 2025’s largest single permit declared $127.1M on its own — so the count and the largest permit are shown beside every total.
| Year | Permits | Total declared | Median permit | Largest single permit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026partial | 853 | $3.92B | $1.0M | $315.0M |
| 2025 | 1,349 | $4.45B | $998K | $127.1M |
| 2024 | 1,374 | $5.94B | $1.0M | $639.0M |
| 2023 | 1,174 | $3.27B | $950K | $78.9M |
| 2022 | 1,135 | $3.25B | $968K | $83.5M |
| 2021 | 927 | $3.14B | $908K | $400.0M |
| 2020 | 661 | $1.76B | $865K | $78.8M |
| 2019 | 1,136 | $3.19B | $845K | $95.3M |
| 2018 | 1,057 | $2.77B | $831K | $165.3M |
| 2017 | 854 | $2.74B | $692K | $868.3M |
| 2016 | 979 | $2.88B | $900K | $131.1M |
| 2015 | 1,083 | $4.52B | $1.0M | $158.0M |
| 2014 | 1,063 | $4.21B | $1.0M | $187.8M |
| 2013 | 1,092 | $3.80B | $1.0M | $376.0M |
| 2012 | 966 | $2.47B | $880K | $237.6M |
| 2011 | 958 | $2.84B | $835K | $596.6M |
| 2010 | 742 | $1.32B | $760K | $37.1M |
| 2009 | 606 | $2.22B | $750K | $371.9M |
| 2008 | 779 | $2.81B | $743K | $243.3M |
| 2007 | 864 | $3.93B | $825K | $644.7M |
| 2006 | 793 | $2.99B | $800K | $208.0M |
| 2005 | 712 | $1.93B | $650K | $161.0M |
| 2004 | 554 | $1.03B | $600K | $32.9M |
| 2003 | 506 | $1.13B | $624K | $152.4M |
| 2002 | 560 | $897.0M | $600K | $26.5M |
| 2001 | 520 | $883.3M | $600K | $29.9M |
| 2000 | 547 | $1.08B | $700K | $37.0M |
| 1999 | 263 | $397.7M | $640K | $50.0M |
How the total is composed
| Declared value | Permits | Share of permits | Total declared | Share of value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100M and above | 50 | 0.2% | $10.83B | 14.3% |
| $10M – $100M | 1,457 | 6.0% | $34.42B | 45.4% |
| $1M – $10M | 9,222 | 38.3% | $23.85B | 31.5% |
| $100K – $1M | 13,358 | 55.4% | $6.65B | 8.8% |
| Under $100K | 20 | 0.1% | $835K | 0.0% |
The two share columns are the point. A band holding a small share of permits and a large share of value means the headline total is carried by a handful of filings, and a reader quoting the total without that is describing a different city than the one in the record.
By community
Ranked by total declared value. A community near the top may be there because of sustained activity or because of one very large permit, so the largest single permit is shown beside every total.
| Community | Permits | Total declared | Median permit | Largest single permit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DOWNTOWN COMMERCIAL CORE | 3,396 | $8.47B | $524K | $644.7M |
| BELTLINE | 996 | $6.18B | $550K | $639.0M |
| EAST SHEPARD INDUSTRIAL | 600 | $2.36B | $1.1M | $400.0M |
| SETON | 310 | $2.10B | $1.5M | $371.9M |
| CALGARY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT | 428 | $1.88B | $750K | $596.6M |
| ST. ANDREWS HEIGHTS | 238 | $1.77B | $1.0M | $868.3M |
| EAU CLAIRE | 294 | $1.35B | $815K | $237.6M |
| DOWNTOWN EAST VILLAGE | 103 | $1.14B | $1.0M | $132.3M |
| SKYVIEW RANCH | 194 | $1.09B | $1.3M | $55.7M |
| SAGE HILL | 340 | $1.06B | $1.4M | $35.6M |
| HILLHURST | 238 | $1.04B | $600K | $169.0M |
| UNIVERSITY DISTRICT | 135 | $1.02B | $1.4M | $152.4M |
| UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS | 245 | $1.01B | $500K | $94.8M |
| SPRINGBANK HILL | 131 | $1.00B | $1.3M | $127.1M |
| BRIDGELAND/RIVERSIDE | 158 | $962.5M | $1.1M | $68.2M |
| DOUGLASDALE/GLEN | 230 | $945.1M | $1.2M | $52.5M |
| MAHOGANY | 261 | $884.0M | $1.4M | $75.5M |
| WEST SPRINGS | 206 | $837.9M | $1.0M | $57.1M |
| LEGACY | 170 | $801.9M | $1.4M | $69.0M |
| GREAT PLAINS | 242 | $788.7M | $900K | $42.7M |
| SUNRIDGE | 367 | $741.1M | $600K | $127.8M |
| SADDLE RIDGE | 220 | $672.6M | $1.4M | $30.6M |
| STONEY 2 | 186 | $672.1M | $779K | $30.6M |
| LINCOLN PARK | 135 | $671.4M | $723K | $95.4M |
| MANCHESTER INDUSTRIAL | 375 | $648.7M | $500K | $106.1M |
By asset class
| Asset class | Permits | Total declared | Median permit | Largest single permit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| multi residential | 5,728 | $26.86B | $1.4M | $228.0M |
| office | 5,469 | $11.62B | $520K | $644.7M |
| other | 4,005 | $10.83B | $600K | $639.0M |
| industrial | 3,596 | $9.83B | $790K | $400.0M |
| institutional | 1,354 | $7.85B | $800K | $868.3M |
| retail | 3,587 | $4.72B | $571K | $147.8M |
| mixed use | 114 | $2.22B | $9.8M | $158.0M |
| hotel | 167 | $1.51B | $1.1M | $596.6M |
| infrastructure | 87 | $294.2M | $1.9M | $27.3M |
Questions about construction value in Calgary
Answered from the City's own published field. Every figure describes permits applied for, not construction completed.
- How much construction is happening in Calgary?
- Across 24,107 building permit records from 1999 to 2026, applicants declared a combined $75.74 billion of construction value to the City of Calgary. That is the value declared on permit applications in nominal, inflation-unadjusted dollars — not money invested, not money spent, and not what the work finally cost. A permit is also not a building: it records that work was authorised, never that it began.
- What is declared construction value?
- It is a figure the applicant supplies when applying for a building permit, stating what the proposed work is worth, which the City of Calgary publishes as a structured field ("estprojectcost") and uses to assess permit fees. It is a declaration made before the work, not a measurement after it, and no municipality revisits it once the job is done.
- What is a typical building permit worth in Calgary?
- The median building permit declares $850,000, so half declare less than that. The average is a much larger and much less useful number, because the largest single permit in the record declares $868.3 million on its own. Where a distribution is this skewed the median describes the typical filing and the total describes the whole; neither describes the other.
- Is construction value rising in Calgary?
- In 2025, the last complete year, applicants declared $4.45 billion across 1,349 permits — less than the $5.94 billion declared in 2024. Both are nominal dollars with no inflation adjustment, and a single large permit can move a year on its own: the largest in 2025 declared $127.1 million.
- Which part of Calgary has the most construction value?
- DOWNTOWN COMMERCIAL CORE carries the highest total declared value of any community in the record, $8.47 billion across 3,396 permits. A community can lead on sustained activity or on one very large filing — the largest single permit there declared $644.7 million — so the total alone does not say which.
Declared construction value measured across records acquired from 1999 to 2026. This is not a statement about all development in Calgary — only about what these sources publish and what this platform retained. Only building permits publish this field, and only 24,107 of them carry it — 0 publish none. Development permits and rezonings carry no value at all, so nothing here describes the planning stage. Values are nominal and unadjusted for inflation. Calgary building permit records.
Attribution
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary. Read the licence
This platform is not affiliated with or endorsed by any municipality.