Edmonton luxury homes’ sales surge to start 2025

It’s hot at the top.

Edmonton’s luxury resale real estate market is having its moment in the sun, a new report shows, finding that Alberta’s capital is seeing among the fastest year-over-year growth to start 2025.

“Edmonton has just been crazy,” says Kingsley Ma, area vice-president with Re/Max Canada in Vancouver. The Re/Max Collection 2025 Spotlight on Luxury report, released in mid-April, shows that the city’s $1-million-plus resales grew nearly 70 per cent in the first two months of the year compared with January and February in 2024.

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That’s the third highest percentage jump in Canada. Saskatoon’s market — starting at $700,000 — increased 100 per cent year over year, while Montreal, where the entry-point for luxury is $2.5 million, grew nearly 79 per cent.

Canada’s largest markets — Toronto and Vancouver — where the luxury market begins at $3 million, saw declining year-over-year luxury resales activity.

Those decreases likely reflect economic concerns, particularly in the Toronto area, Ma notes.

“Many luxury buyers work in leadership positions in corporations or are business owners themselves, so the gloom of tariffs is having a negative effect.”

By comparison, Alberta’s luxury market has fared better in large part because it is much less costly.

In fact, the entry-point for luxury in the province — $1 million in Edmonton and $1.5 million in Calgary — is roughly the average price for any housing type in both Toronto and Vancouver. For example, in Toronto, the median sale price was about $1.25 million in the first quarter of 2025.

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The large price difference between those larger cities and Edmonton actually boosted demand in the city’s luxury market because average, out-of-province buyers are arriving willing and able to purchase in the $1-million-plus price segment, says realtor John Carter, broker/owner of Re/Max River City.

“The luxury market follows the same story of affordability as the entire Edmonton market.”

It’s a value buy, he adds.

“What you get for $1 million to $1.5 million is a lot of house, and it’s often a brand-new build.”

Another major push behind the rise in luxury in Edmonton is infill construction in older neighbourhoods.

“Developers can’t build those homes fast enough,” Carter says.

Even in Edmonton’s most sought-after communities like Windemere, $1.2 million gets buyers a 3,200-square-foot, single-family detached home with good schools and other desirable community amenities, he adds.

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“The bulk of luxury sales in Edmonton is between $1 million and $1.5 million.” Carter further notes that sales above that price range are typically few and far between.

Still, 2025 has got off to a strong start with the Re/Max report finding Edmonton had 56 sales of $1 million or more in January and February. That’s nearly as much activity as Calgary, which had 68 sales — though its luxury entry-level price-point now is $1.5 million.

Given the momentum, Edmonton could see a banner year for luxury, a market segment that until recently had been among the slowest corners of the resale market.

Although still a sliver of overall housing demand — Edmonton’s total resales average more than 2,000 or more resales per month — the luxury segment is likely to remain hot by historical measures as more buyers see it as a deal relative to other big markets.

“There is just so much value to the luxury side,” Carter says.

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