By Josh Methot. Updated October 2026.
If you’ve got about $650,000 to spend in Calgary’s inner city, you’ve probably looked at a condo, a townhouse and a semi-detached house in the same week and wondered which one costs less to live in. Here’s the plain answer.
At $650,000 in the inner city, the property tax is almost the same on all four home types, about $350 a month. What changes the monthly cost is the condo fee: a median of $1,050 a month on an apartment condo, about $375 on a townhouse, and usually nothing on a semi-detached or detached house (MLS sales data via Pillar 9, September 2026).
So on fixed monthly costs, the semi or the detached house usually comes out lowest. The trade-off is that you pay your own utilities and every repair, and at this price a detached house is older and smaller than the others. The apartment fee also buys more than it looks.
The quick version: costs and trade-offs at $650,000
| Condo | Townhouse | Semi | Detached | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| You get | 1,310 sq ft, 2 bed, built 2003 to 2017 | 1,475 sq ft, 3 bed, built 2001 to 2018 | 1,355 sq ft, 3 bed, built 1994 to 2004 | 1,050 sq ft, 3 bed, built 1915 to 1956 |
| Fee a month | $1,050 (most $820 to $1,280) | $375 (most $300 to $460) | None on 17 of 20 | None |
| Tax a month | About $354 | About $349 | About $364 | About $348 |
| Fee covers | Heat, water, garbage, upkeep | Exterior, grounds, reserve. Utilities are yours | No fee | No fee |
| Days to sell | 48 | 26 | 25 | 20 |
Condo means an apartment condo. MLS sales data via Pillar 9, September 2026. Calgary’s City Centre district, $600,000 to $700,000, homes sold, active and pending over the 180 days to 28 September. Medians. 39 apartments, 92 townhouses, 20 semi-detached and 96 detached homes. Days to sell is for sold homes only. Tax as listed on MLS.
Which one costs less every month?
Buy any of them at $650,000 and the mortgage is the same, so the difference is what comes on top of it. The tax is within about $16 a month across all four at this price, which leaves the condo fee as the biggest gap.
That doesn’t make the apartment the expensive choice. People tend to treat a condo fee as money thrown away, and it isn’t. In most Calgary apartment buildings the fee covers your heat, your water, the garbage and the landscaping, and you pay for internet and electricity. In a townhouse you’ve usually got your own furnace, your own hot water tank and your own electricity meter, so those bills come on top of a smaller fee. On a semi or a detached house, every utility bill is yours.
Self-managed townhouse complexes are the ones to read closely. The fee there often covers little more than the reserve fund and a small amount of building insurance. Larger complexes usually add landscaping, snow removal, garbage and insurance for the buildings, but not your unit. Whether a townhouse is a conventional condo, a bareland condo or a freehold decides a lot of this, and our guide to buying a townhome in Calgary explains all three.
Home insurance is the one number we won’t guess at. It depends on the building, its age, whether it has post-tension cables, where it is and who you are. Get a quote on the actual address before you write an offer.
Where does the surprise bill hide?
In a condo, it hides in the reserve fund. Very low fees look good on the listing, and sometimes that’s because the building has been putting off maintenance or has let the reserve run thin. Special assessments aren’t the norm, but they do happen. That’s why we almost always have the condo documents read by a third-party reviewer before our clients are committed. If you’ve found a building and want a second read on it before you write, send us the listing.
Our post on Calgary condo fees covers what a reasonable fee looks like.
In a semi or a detached house, there’s no reserve fund because you’re it. Every roof and every furnace is yours. The detached homes in this price range were mostly built between 1915 and 1956, so budget for that, and read the inspection report with it in mind.
A townhouse sits between the two. The complex carries the exterior, and you carry the inside.
Who pays when hail hits the roof?
On a detached or semi-detached house, you do, through your own home insurance. The good news is that a full roof replacement from hail is rare. What we see more often, mostly in the northeast where the hail is worse, is a claim for siding, eavestroughs and a roof repair.
In a townhouse complex, the condo corporation deals with it, and it’ll usually fix the section of roof that’s damaged rather than redo the whole complex. Whether that goes through the building’s insurance or comes out of the reserve fund depends on the damage and the size of the deductible. We’ve seen both.
Apartment buildings almost always have flat roofs, and hail rarely touches them. Damaged vinyl siding gets replaced by the board or the owner, depending on where it is.
Which one sells faster?
At this price, the detached houses sold fastest, at a median of 20 days, and the apartments slowest, at 48. Townhouses and semis sat in between, at 25 to 26 days.
How fast each type sells depends on the market. Right now there’s an oversupply of townhouses and apartments, so days on market are creeping up for both, while detached homes in the inner city are still fairly balanced. CREB puts apartment supply at over five months and row supply at over four months, with the apartment benchmark down 8% from a year ago (CREB, as of September 2026).
What that means for you: whatever you buy, plan to keep it. We don’t like to see anyone sell inside five years, and seven or more is better. In a condo right now, the equity you build over those years comes from paying down the mortgage, not from prices rising.
Townhouse or semi-detached?
This is the comparison people don’t expect to make. A semi-detached house shares one wall, like many townhouses, but it usually comes with no condo fee and a bit more yard.
At this budget, 17 of the 20 semis we found had no fee at all. Most had a finished basement, and all 20 had a garage. The three that did charge a fee were mostly in Garrison Woods, and while they’re listed as semi-detached, they’re part of a condo corporation.
The catch is supply. Most semi-detached homes in the inner city sell above $700,000, and only 20 came up in this range in six months. They exist, but you’ll be waiting for one.
What we see with clients at this budget
Between us, Art and I have spent a combined twenty-eight years selling on these streets, and what we’ve learned is that people rarely weigh all four of these at once. They’re usually at different stages of life. Where we do see a real choice is between a condo and a townhouse.
It’s often about a dog. Clients living on the third floor of a building with no elevator have to take the dog out two or three times a day, and those stairs get old. What they want is a back patio door they can open onto a small yard, with their own garage and their own front door. For most people, moving from a condo to a townhouse is that step up.
It isn’t always a clean line, either. Some main-floor condos have their own entrance and a front patio on the street, like our office does, and a two-storey one can feel a lot like a townhouse.
We’ve also had clients fall for the bright new townhouses in the inner city, then realise they didn’t want to pay condo fees at all. They bought a semi-detached house instead: a newer home in a great community, a slightly bigger yard, no condo fee, and still just one shared wall. It was the right fit.
Renovation is another quiet difference. A townhouse is essentially your own home inside, so you need far fewer approvals than in an apartment, where the board often has a say on flooring and you can’t move the plumbing.
What would I tell my own kid?
If my own kid came to me with $650,000, I’d tell them to wait for a smaller semi-detached house in one of the good inner-city communities. They’d live with one shared wall. In return they’d get the inner-city lifestyle, no condo fees, and a home they could stay in for a long time instead of three to five years. There aren’t many at this price, and I’d wait for one.
That answer changes with the person. If a detached or semi is too soon, or too much for where you are right now, a condo is a perfectly good place to start. Live there, pay down the mortgage, and move up when you’re ready.
There’s no free ride with any of them. At the same price, the condo comes with the biggest fee and the most covered by it. The townhouse has a smaller fee and your own utility bills. The semi or the detached house has no fee, and every repair is yours. Not every buyer needs a detached home, and not every buyer is going to be happy in a condo.
Your next step
Run the numbers on the two or three listings you’re serious about, with the real condo fee and a real insurance quote, and ask yourself where you’ll be in seven years. If you’d like a second opinion on the ones you’ve found, or a search set up for smaller inner-city semis, send us a note and we’ll take a look.
If you’re still deciding between home types, our guide to Calgary home types lays out who each one suits.
Frequently asked questions about townhouses and condos in Calgary
A condo is a type of ownership, and a townhouse is a building shape. Most townhouses in Calgary are condos, either conventional or bareland, and a few are freehold with no condo fee. In everyday use, condo usually means an apartment in a building with shared halls and one front door.
To buy, usually not. CREB’s benchmark is $412,400 for a row home and $291,400 for an apartment (CREB, as of September 2026). At the same price, a townhouse usually costs less each month, because at $650,000 in the inner city the median fee is about $375 on a townhouse and $1,050 on an apartment, though the apartment fee usually includes heat and water.
You share one or two walls, you still pay a condo fee, and the board’s decisions and reserve fund are part of what you’re buying. Your utilities are usually yours on top of the fee. In return you often get your own front door, a garage and a small yard.
Most don’t. At $600,000 to $700,000 in the inner city, 17 of 20 had no fee. The few that do are usually part of a condo corporation, most often in Garrison Woods.
The condo corporation, usually for the damaged section of roof only. Whether it goes through the building’s insurance or the reserve fund depends on the damage and the deductible.