Ongoing weakness in Alberta's housing market "can be explained by adjustment over the past five years to continuing challenges in the energy sector," said Carolyn Wilkins, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, during a recent speech at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

Study finds major Canadian cities have room to improve when it comes to densification

Densification is a buzzword now in the real estate industry, and it's certainly on the minds of many policy makers in cities across Canada, including Calgary.

If you travel to cities around the world, you will see firsthand how the other half lives, so to speak. More people are living close together in those global cities.

HGTV star Todd Talbot shares advice from 20 years in real estate at the Calgary Home and Garden Show

At the age of 22, Vancouver actor Todd Talbot bought his first home, paying his mortgage with the help of a rent-paying friend.

It was a unique occurrence among his theatre colleagues.

"(As an actor) you don't make a ton of money and you are pretty transient," said Talbot, who, as a teenager, appeared on the Hillside TV series with fellow Vancouverite and current Hollywood heavyweight Ryan Reynolds.

However, it was this initial foray into real estate – $190,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo two blocks from Kitsilano Beach – that sparked Talbot's second career as an entrepreneur, leveraging one piece of property for another, and then another, and eventually leading to ownership of several real estate companies.

Westman Centre for Real Estate Studies is developing tomorrow's real estate professionals

While interest accruing on a mortgage balance is rarely a welcome sight, the growing interest in the Westman Centre for Real Estate Studies at the University of Calgary is a different story.

Part of the Haskayne School of Business, the Westman Centre was founded in 2012 with $7.6 million in funding from the real estate industry, which included a $5 million endowment from Jay Westman. Its mission is to be a catalyst for the development of real estate professionals and a leading centre of excellence for real estate studies through its teaching, research and community engagement activities.

"Industry saw a need for a program where graduates would have a firm grasp of the real estate sector and the career opportunities it could offer," said Jessica Abt, the centre's director.

How Calgary's housing market stacks up against other major centres

When it comes to the housing market and the availability of affordable options, people often lose sight of the big picture. Instead of obsessing over the minute details of the market in any one particular city, it can be helpful to take a step back and examine things in a broader context to provide points of comparison. This dose of perspective helps one to remember that while $400,000 might seem like a lot to ask for a detached home in one city, in another major metropolitan area, people might be hard pressed to find a home for less than twice that amount.

National activity down from 2015, but consistent with 2014, says CMHC

Foreign ownership of condominium-style apartments in Calgary this year is unchanged from a year prior and continues to represent a small proportion of the total market, according to a new report.

In a recent briefing, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) noted foreign buyer activity in the city's apartment sector represented 0.9 per cent of all activity in 2016. That's down from 1.1 per cent in 2015, but up from 0.2 per cent in 2014.

With discussions continuing to swirl around Calgary being an attractive location for foreign homebuyers, CREB®Now contributor Alex Frazer-Harrison sat down with three local experts to get their opinions on what the future holds for the city's housing market.

Here's what they had to say:

With discussions continuing to swirl around Calgary being an attractive location for foreign homebuyers, CREB®Now contributor Alex Frazer-Harrison sat down with three local experts to get their opinions on what the future holds for the city's housing market.

Here's what they had to say:

Housing officials say foreign investment shift too early to tell; still unwavering on city's potential

Calgary could be the new Vancouver. At least that's what has some real estate observers maintaining more than two months after the B.C. government imposed a 15 per cent land transfer tax on real estate purchases by foreign buyers in the province's most populated city.

Aimed at dampening foreign investment—mostly from mainland China, which has been suspected of pushing up demand and prices in markets such as Vancouver where the benchmark price for a home is close to $1 million – the tax appears to be working.

RBC releases new housing trends, affordability report

Despite signs of a modest recovery in home resale activity, Calgary's housing market continued to struggle amid plentiful supply of homes available for sale, declining prices and softening demographics fundamentals, according to RBC Economics' recent Housing Trends and Affordability report.

RBC said its cost-of-ownership measure for Calgary rose by 0.3 percentage points in the second quarter to 33 per cent of a typical family's pre-tax income, still well below the long-term average of 40.4 per cent for the area.

Both the single-detached and condo segments registered small improvements.