What It Costs to Sell a House in Alberta

The cost to sell a house in Alberta is dominated by one line, and it is the one line nobody is obliged to quote you at any particular number. Everything else, the lawyer, the discharge, the adjustments, is small and predictable. This page itemises every cost of selling a house with 2026 figures, works a full example on a $1.2 million Canmore house sale, and covers the one item out-of-province owners here reliably forget until they read the statement of adjustments.

What it costs to sell a house in Alberta: the full list

The direct answer, on a $1.2 million house sale with a mortgage being discharged and no prepayment penalty: about $44,000, of which roughly 95% is commission and GST on it.

Commission and GST, the number that is not fixed

Commission in Alberta is negotiable and set by no board or regulator. That sentence is worth reading twice, because the way commission is usually quoted, as a structure rather than a proposal, makes it sound like a tariff. It is not. The structure you will hear most often is 7% on the first $100,000 of the sale price and 3% on the balance (WOWA, August 2026), typically split with whichever brokerage represents the buyer.

On the common convention:

$814,000 apartment condo

$28,420

7% of $100,000 + 3% of $714,000, plus $1,421 GST

$1,200,000 house

$40,000

plus $2,000 GST, so $42,000 total

$2,150,000 detached

$68,500

plus $3,425 GST, so $71,925 total

GST rate on commission

5%

applied to the fee, never to the sale price

GST is charged on the brokerage's service, so it lands on the commission and not on the price of a resale home, which is itself exempt. Flat-fee, tiered and reduced-service arrangements all exist in Alberta; the realtor fee calculator will price any structure you are offered, and real estate commission in Alberta covers how the split usually works. If you are weighing a private sale instead, start with the for sale by owner Alberta page.

Legal fees, the discharge and the mortgage

Your lawyer's job when you sell a house is narrower than on a purchase: clear the title, pay out and discharge the mortgage, prepare the statement of adjustments, and pay you the balance. Expect roughly $1,000 to $1,800 plus disbursements in Alberta as of August 2026, with condominiums usually at the higher end because of the document work.

Registering a Discharge of Mortgage or Encumbrance at Alberta Land Titles costs $10, plus $5 for each additional title affected, under the fee schedule effective 1 May 2026. That is the entire Land Titles bill for a seller. There is no land transfer tax in Alberta, so the line that would cost an Ontario seller nothing and an Ontario buyer $20,475 on a $1.2 million purchase simply does not appear on either side here.

The prepayment penalty is the item that catches people. If you have a closed mortgage and you are ending the term early rather than porting it to your next home, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada sets out the standard: the penalty is usually the higher of three months' interest on the balance, or the interest rate differential. The IRD is the one that hurts, and lenders typically use it when your contract rate is above current rates and you signed less than five years ago. FCAC's own worked example puts three months' interest at $3,000 and the IRD at $12,000 on the same $200,000 balance. Get the figure from your lender in writing before you set a possession date, and ask whether porting is available.

Adjustments: property tax, condo fees and the year of sale

Canmore bills property tax once a year. Council sets rates in May, notices go out in late May and payment is due on the last business day of June. Your lawyer prorates the calendar year to the possession date on the statement of adjustments. Sell in September having paid the June bill and the buyer reimburses you for October through December; sell in April and you give a credit for January through March.

Condominium fees work the same way, prorated to the day, and any special assessment already levied is normally the seller's unless the contract says otherwise. Alberta caps what a corporation may charge for the documents a buyer's lawyer will ask for: $200 for an estoppel certificate ($300 if rushed inside three days), $100 for an information certificate, and the corporation has 10 days to respond. Budget for those and, more importantly, request them early.

The Canmore item out-of-province owners forget

Here is the cost that does not appear on any Alberta-wide checklist. Canmore's 2026 total tax rate is 0.457% of assessed value for a primary residence and 0.833% for a residential property that is not a primary residence and has no Alberta-resident owner. The difference is 0.377% of assessed value, or roughly $4,520 a year on a $1.2 million assessment, and the whole-year bill is what gets prorated between you and your buyer.

Two consequences follow, and both land on the seller.

First, the declaration. Primary residence declarations are due by 11:59 p.m. on 31 December each year and reflect how the property was used in that calendar year. Miss it and the Town assigns the property to the non-primary subclass for the following tax year, and you also lose the right to complain about the assessment for that year. If you are selling in the spring, the declaration you did or did not file the previous December is already priced into the tax bill you are about to split.

Second, the buyer inherits your subclass. The Town is explicit that a property bought during the year carries the classification the previous owner declared, and that how the taxes are shared is a matter for the purchase agreement. A seller who declared correctly hands the buyer the 0.457% rate for the remainder of the year. A seller who did not hands over 0.833%, and a buyer's lawyer who notices will ask for an adjustment.

There is one relief: a property-sale exemption applies where 100% of legal ownership transferred to an arm's length purchaser in the year and the buyer or a tenant immediately occupied it as a primary residence, though the buyer still has to declare to claim it. The Canmore Livability Tax guide has the full mechanics, and the property tax calculator turns an assessed value into an annual bill by class.

Worked example: a $1.2 million Canmore sale

Resale house in Canmore, sold at $1,200,000, mortgage balance $500,000 being discharged and ported to a new home so no prepayment penalty, possession 1 October, primary residence correctly declared, assessed value $1.15 million.

That is roughly 3.6% of the sale price. Swap the correctly declared primary residence for an undeclared non-primary property and the annual bill on the same assessment moves from about $5,253 to about $9,585, which changes the adjustment and, in practice, the negotiation.

What this means if you are selling

The cost to sell a house in Alberta is essentially one negotiable number plus about $1,500 of admin. So spend your energy where the money is. Get more than one proposal, negotiate the rate, the term and the holdover clause together, and price any reduced-service option honestly against what you would be doing yourself. Ask your lender for the prepayment penalty in writing before you commit to a possession date. Order the Real Property Report and the condominium documents in the first week, not the last. And if the property is in Canmore and you live elsewhere, check your primary residence declaration status before you list, because that one decision moves several thousand dollars across the closing table. The step-by-step selling process covers what happens next.