Two Alberta cities went into the same national benchmarking study. They came out $57,000 apart on every low-rise home they approve.
Calgary charges $93,000 per low-rise unit in municipal fees. Edmonton charges $36,000. Same province, same building code, same trades driving between the two on Highway 2, and a gap of 2.6 times on what city hall bills before a shovel moves.
The figures come from the 2024 edition of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) Municipal Benchmarking Study, which compared 23 municipalities. It is a better scorecard than most cities would want published about themselves. It also has one very obvious problem in it.
Fifth overall with a thirteenth place problem
Calgary finished 5th of 23 municipalities, the top quarter of the country. On process the city earns it.
Planning features, 7th, on a score of 85%. Approvals timelines, 6th, at 4.2 months, down from 5.4 months in the previous edition. That is real work by real staff and it gets said first.
Then the fee columns. Government charges on low-rise, 13th of 23. Middle of the pack.
Read the pair together. Calgary’s top-five finish is carried by its planning department, and the invoice side drags it back. High-rise charges land 10th at $11,100 a unit, which is respectable. Low-rise is the weak link.
Calgary bills $57,000 more per door than Edmonton
Edmonton finished first overall in the same study. Its low-rise charge is $36,000 a unit and its approvals time is 3.4 months. Calgary’s low-rise charge is $93,000.
None of this is provincial policy. The building code is the same and labour costs are close. Land is different. But $57,000 a door does not come out of geology. It comes out of a fee schedule that a council writes, votes on and can amend on any Tuesday it chooses.
The nearest comparison is the other Alberta city measured on the same criteria in the same year. Edmonton finished first overall while charging less than half as much per low-rise unit.
What a month of waiting costs in Calgary
The study also prices delay, which is the cost nobody puts on an invoice.
Calgary’s page in the study lists indirect costs of $3,862 and $3,137 per unit per month. Edmonton’s page lists $3,260 and $1,606. Calgary runs higher on both lines, and the pages do not say which figure belongs to low-rise and which to high-rise.
The city has been cutting its wait. Going from 5.4 months to 4.2 months removes 1.2 months. At $3,862 a month, the higher of the two figures, that is roughly $4,600 per unit (Tribune arithmetic).
Now put it beside the fee gap. The city clawed back about $4,600 per unit on speed while still charging $57,000 more per unit than Edmonton does. The department that moves the needle is not the department holding the pen on the fee bylaw. Speed is being used to apologize for price.
The fix is a line item, not a strategy
Fixing an approvals process is hard. It takes new software and years of retraining. Calgary did that part and the ranking shows it. Changing a charge schedule takes a council vote and the willingness to explain the vote afterward. It is the easier of the two jobs and it is the one still outstanding.
Development charges are generally passed through to buyers in the price of the home. A buyer who finances that cost carries it on the mortgage, with interest, for 25 years, so a fee decision made in a committee room in 2024 can still be getting paid off in 2049.
The full Calgary scorecard shows a city with a strong planning score, and Edmonton’s scorecard shows what the same study found one city north. The weak line in Calgary’s is a number in a bylaw.
Council sets that number. Ask your ward councillor why Calgary’s low-rise charge is $93,000 when Edmonton’s is $36,000, and ask what it would take to put the fee schedule on a committee agenda.
Related from Alberta Tribune: Edmonton Ranks First In Canada For Housing Charges And Approvals
