I’m sure you’ve heard someone throw around the term RPR or Real Property Report at some point, and if you’ve seen one, you may think it is as simple as a schematic on a home lot. However, there is a lot to them on the back end of a deal, and a lot of work is required on the front end before listing to ensure a smooth sale. 

What is a Real Property Report? 

So glad you asked! A Real Property Report (RPR going forward), is a legal document created by a Land Surveyor that outlines where a home and any permanent fixtures are located in relation to property lines. It is a legal document that is required for the successful sale of your home in Alberta. 

What Sellers Need to Know

Per the purchase contract, and listing agreement, it is your responsibility to provide this to us within 10 days (ASAP!). If you need help, call your agent, they may have a few tricks up their sleeve to help find it. You may need to order one, or get yours updated, for that, reach out to your local Land Surveyor. 

To make sure you have the right RPR, make sure the Legal land description lines up with what you have on title. To have a Compliant RPR, it must have a stamp from your local city, town, or municipality stating that everything is within compliance. Fortunately, RPRs do not expire, but they can go out of date if you do substantial changes to the property such as building a garage, deck, or even adding AC. 

Why do we need Real Property Reports?

The reason they are important is that it helps ensure when you sell your home, you are not handing off any major issues to the buyers. The primary purpose on an RPR is to make sure your home is compliant with local bylaws, especially regarding setbacks (distance from property line or other structures). To have a Compliant RPR, it must have a stamp from your local city, town, or municipality stating that everything is within compliance. Fortunately, RPRs do not expire, but they can go out of date if you do substantial changes to the property such as building a garage, deck, or even adding AC. If your RPR is not compliant with local bylaws, it is your responsibility to make sure those problems are fixed before possession, or have otherwise received an exception. I will always recommend getting your RPR updated right after you’ve done major changes to your property, it is substantially easier to get an exception or “grandfather in” changes if you already have the updated RPR and Compliance Stamp. The reason they are important, is that it helps ensure when you sell your home, you are not handing off any major issues to the buyers. 

My home is not compliant! What do I do? 

Buckle up, time for a lot of “if-or” statements! If your home is not compliant, you have a few options: Fix the issue, or get a relaxation (exception). For fixing the issue, this can sometimes be as simple as moving a shed 3cm, othertimes, you may be required to tear down a fence or garage and rebuild in the right spot. 

Asking for a relaxation from your town would be option #2, this will be easier if you still have all the building permits, best case scenario they say “sure”, add a compliance stamp, and something called an Advisory Notice, what that Notice will say is “This is grandfathered in, so is compliant, however, if you tear down the garage you will not be allowed to build it in the same spot a second time.”

I cannot find my RPR, what are my options?

There are a few things you can do, my tried and true is reaching out to whichever lawyer you worked with when you bought the home, sometimes they have the RPR from your purchase. 

Another option is calling the land surveyor who did the RPR previously, only catch is that you have to remember who did it for the sellers. 

Another option is offering Title Insurance in lieu of an RPR. Basically buying an insurance policy that will protect the buyer’s from any financial harm if the lack of an RPR leads to further financial issues. This does not protect them from known issues, so will not work if you know that your RPR is non-compliant. Don’t even think of it.

What Buyers Need to Know

Largely, the act of getting the Real Property Report lies on the seller’s plate, however it is yours (and your agent’s) responsibility to make sure there are no nasty surprises. First, compare the Legal Land Description matches the one on title and the purchase agreement, make sure it matches. 

Now you have to check for compliance, fortunately, they are commonly done with a big red stamp that says “Compliant as of x date assuming no substantial changes bla bla bla” with a signature and date at the end. 

Always check the date, and compare what you see on the RPR to what you see at the home, is the deck accounted for, the permanent shed, AC? Some towns don’t care about the smaller things like AC, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t see the occasional item, but it is important that you confirm this with the Land Use Bylaws and the town. 

“Why should I check this if my Realtor and Lawyer are going to check it anyways?” Because I am a believer in “Trust, but verify”. It is the smart thing to do, I like to relate it to automatic braking and deer. If you are looking out for the deer while driving, and see one in the distance, you can start slowing down gradually to give the deer lots more time to move out of the way, or give yourself time to come to a gradual stop. And then you’re on your merry way after the issue is resolved. 

Compared to automatic braking (lawyers right before closing), who will slam those brakes so hard it’ll throw that prized chili you were taking home all over your dashboard, the prized chili in this metaphor being your dream home that you are now locked in to buy. Yes, unless it is a weird loophole or negotiation, the seller will be responsible to fix the issue, but do you really want to deal with that headache? 

The Lesson: 

Update your Real Property Report!! 

This was written and researched by a real boy (me!), AI was not used. 

If you pay attention to real estate news, you have likely hear a smattering of terms, Buyers Market, Balanced Market, Days On Market, Months of Inventory, Benchmark Price, among others. I will try to help you understand these terms, and how to calculate what “type” of market it is. Why am I giving you this info? Isn’t it my job to do this for you? Correct! However, I like to provide too much info as opposed to too little, if I tell you there are only 3 months of inventory for bungalows in High River, naturally, you’re going to ask: What does that mean? How did you get there? 

Remember when your teacher said you’ll use math one day? Here it is! 

Lets Start with Terms

Buyer’s Market: Ah, a buyer’s market, these are the ones where buyers get to choose from a litany of homes, there is a lot of supply, but very little demand. This usually means buyers are in a stronger position to negotiate in their favour, and homes will stay on the market for longer. We usually have 5 to 12 months of inventory for this market. 

Seller’s Market: This is the market where you hear about bidding fights, over asking sale prices, and back to back showings. During a sellers market, they have the power, and can more easily negotiate in their favour. In this market, we usually have 0 to 2 months of Inventory. 

Balanced Market: This is the happy place, it doesn’t happen often, but this is where there is enough inventory coming onto the market, and enough buyers out looking for a new place to keep inventory at 3 to 4 months.  

Absorption Rate: This is how quickly homes are selling, and how many, usually this gets represented as a percentage. 

Days On Market: Days On Market (DOM) is how long a home stays on market, starting at 0 when it is listed, and finishing at x when the home is firm sold. 

Benchmark Price: This is where your average, run of the mill home, in a run of the mill community should be selling for. 

Average Price: Average sale price of homes over a period of time. These numbers are fun, because you get some homes as cheap as 250K, and as high as 2.5mil, so it is not the most accurate number. 

Median Price: The middle price of homes, the peak of the bell curve for pricing. 

Home Pricing Index (HPI): A really advanced version of benchmark price, this takes into account attributes that buyers assign to a property and uses over 15 years of MLS data to give us a more accurate number. This is usually represented as a single digit with 2 decimal places (x.yz). 

Active: Homes that are active on the market, and do not have an offer. 

Pending (Conditionally Sold): Homes that have accepted an offer, and are waiting for conditions to be satisfied. 

Sold: Sold Firm homes, these are no longer for sale. 

Terminated: The seller took the home off the market, this could be for a multitude of reasons (stale listing, unhappy with performance, change of heart etc). 

Withdrawn: Like terminated, except it is just a pause on the listing. 

Expired: Seller Representation Agreements (Listing Contracts) have an expiry date, an expired listing just means that that date has been reached, so the home has been removed from the market. 

How to Calculate the Market

So, to do this, we need to find some data first. I will be pulling data for the Calgary Area, you may need to find different sources for data. 

There are a few places you can find the data, most require you to leave some contact information as they require you to sign up/login. Zolo, House Sigma, Honest Door, My Website as well allows you to search solds. What you need to know is how many homes sold over the last 3 months. The other pieces of data are: how many homes are Active, and how many homes are Conditionally Sold, this is a lot easier to find as the information shows up easily on realtor.ca. From there, the math is pretty easy. 

Active Homes + Pending / (Homes that sold in the last 3 months / 3) = Total Months of Inventory

So for High River detached homes as of August 17, 2026 (when I typed up the blog post, sorry, forgot to click “schedule” on posting it!), it would look like:

33 + 4 / (47 / 3) = 2.36 months of inventory. 

See? Easy! The trick is finding reliable data that isn’t filled with clutter. If you are looking for months of inventory for detached homes, make sure you aren’t included Semi-Detached or Townhomes, and if you want to get really granular with it, break it down by type of home (bungalow, 2 storey, etc). Just be cautious about getting too specific, because it limits your data pool. This data can be pulled for both the whole city, or your specific community. For Calgary, you may just want to focus on your community and the nearby surrounding ones, but for a smaller town like High River, you can pull the whole dataset. 

You’ll also notice the number is falling somewhere between Seller’s and Balanced Market, so now we should look at the Days On Market, this is a bit more interesting to find, I pulled it up on Zolo and apparently for today it is saying 0 Days on Market, which is not right. 

Through the Calgary Real Estate Board, I am seeing this trend: 

April Average DOM: 40
May Average DOM: 66 days
June Average DOM: 34 days
July Average DOM: 39 days

First rule of Statistics: They lie. Remember when I described averages up at the top of the page? This is where it can come into play, May saw a huge jump in DOM because 3 homes sold after over 200 days on market, and another sold after just over 100 days. 

But, I hear you say “Nick, none of this is helping and I am even more confused than before, besides,my uncle’s brother second detached cousin said that it is a Seller’s market right now!” Well, he could be right, market type is very much a shades of gray calculation, I prefer to get some details about what you are looking for first, type of home, price point, condition of home even, and from there I give my opinion as to where that home that you are looking for or selling will fall as far as market type. 

If you want some details and a rough estimate of the type of market you would experience for the home you are selling, or the home you are looking for, let me know! 

There are many great reasons to love this town, it's not limited to this list of course, but it's worth a read if you’re looking for a great reason to live here!

1. Water - A common thing among southern Alberta towns is a water restriction during some months, High River has fewer of these (due in part, to the High River we have).

2. Great downtown - Might be a touch controversial, but I like the layout of downtown. Everything is easy to get to from one parking spot, and there are a lot of great businesses to visit (see #10). The controversial part is that after the 2013 floods, the town had downtown renovated to have a more walkable feel and fewer parking spots, this left a lot of people upset. There is still plenty of parking along 1st Street, you just may need to walk a touch longer, and the few stalls we do have left on the avenues are accessible enough for folks with mobility issues. 

3. Affordable homes - Affordable being a spectrum of course, but when compared to surrounding areas, for all the amenities and home design diversity, it's a pretty darn great place to get a home!

4. Our hospital - Such a great hospital! You can find parking easily, its small enough to get around easily, and everyone there is so incredibly nice. Either for welcoming a newborn or providing care for already established families, the hospital here in town is amazing. It is where my daughter was born, I know I had the easy part of the whole birthing process, but the team there was absolutely amazing. Some of the beds you see on the 2nd and 3rd floor are a little more dated, but that is easily made up for by amazing staff and the attention to detail that they provide. 

5. Small town vibe, big town amenities - High River is quite easy to traverse from one end to the other, whether you walk, bike, or drive. Being that easy to traverse, usually means that you lack amenities, however, in this case we have just about everything you need, groceries, convenience stores, cafes, food, and shops! 

6. Quiet - so so quiet, I love it here. I can bike around and at times rarely see a car, and parking is always available if I need to drive, and being able to hang out outside without hearing much road noise is a massive plus. 

7. Incredibly supportive community and town spirit - lots of towns support their small businesses, High River thrives around them! On our Rant and Rave Facebook pages, you will also see so much excitement for new businesses, and afterwards constant posts raving about them. Local businesses are not a passive thing however, you do need to support and nourish them (even if it is just sharing their post, or occasionally stopping in for a coffee). 

8. Public events - there is always something to do! Whether you go to the library for one of their events, a local business for a craft day, or one of the many repeating events around town! 

9. Accessibility and welcoming for everyone - When we moved here, we were almost immediately accepted into the community. Our neighbour was standing at the base of our driveway saying “Hi!” before we even got the first box into the door, and where else can you have a genuine conversation with the folks at the grocery store? Among that as well, we have some great Accessibility programs (such as Inclusion Foothills, who strive for accessibility for all).

10. Diversity in small business - Lots of towns have small businesses, so do most cities, however for density of selection, High River is hard to beat. We have tons of selection, from One Stop Shops, to Bookstores, bakeries, a shop to get pop culture stuff, cafes, candy shops, all within a few minute walk of each other. 

If you still don’t see a great reason for you to live here, give me a call, and I will talk your ear off about some of the other great stuff this town can offer! And if I have convinced you to move here, drop me a line and I’d love to make that dream a reality!