Calgary's downtown office vacancy rate is going nowhere but up.

By the end of this year, that rate is projected to jump to 29.5 per cent, and it will climb even higher moving into 2021, says Greg Kwong, regional managing director with commercial real estate company CBRE.

Smart and green technologies recently considered luxuries are becoming increasingly important to Calgary homebuyers, and the city's homebuilders have taken this to heart.

Many people who are currently in the home-buying stage have energy conservation as a high priority on their house hunting checklist. There are several upgrades that can be completed that make homes energy efficient. For sellers looking to implement solutions before putting them on the market, it can sometimes be hard to narrow down exactly what's going to be most beneficial. Here are some solutions that buyers are looking for:

Most of us remember mom reminding us to turn off the lights when we left the room or to make sure the door was shut properly when we came in from the cold. It turns out she was right.

With just a 10 degree drop below zero, a typical Albertan household could see their electricity consumption go up by about eight per cent and natural gas consumption go up by about 40 per cent.

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.

More than 750 new single-family homes in Alberta will be powered by solar this year, as Jayman Built makes the green technology a standard feature in a first-of-its-kind offering by any Canadian builder.

Downtown office market begins bounce back

People who have lived and worked in Calgary for a long time know that the downtown office market is a great barometer of what's happening in the city's overall economy.

For the past couple of years, record vacancy rates in the heart of the city have made headline news, not only in Calgary, but nationally.

However, a recent report by commercial real estate firm Avison Young suggests we've hit the bottom and there's nowhere to go but up.