What Are Comps in Real Estate?

You found a house you love. The listing looks right. But how do you know whether the price is fair or if you're about to overpay by $40,000?

That's exactly what real estate comps are for.

Whether you're buying your first home in Calgary, pricing a property to sell, or just trying to make sense of what your neighbourhood is worth, real estate comps are the most grounded tool you have. They replace guesswork with real data.

Here's what comps are, why they matter, and how to find them in Canada.

For informational purposes only. Always consult with a licensed real estate professional before proceeding with any real estate transaction.

Quick Comps Checklist for Buyers and Sellers

• Comps = recently sold homes similar to the one you're interested in
• Focus on sales from the past 3–6 months
• In fast-moving markets, prioritize the last 90 days
• Stay within 1 km (or the same neighbourhood) when possible
• Match property type, size, bedrooms/bathrooms, and condition
• Aim for at least 3 comps before you make a decision
• Sold prices matter, not asking prices

House hunting and feeling overwhelmed? Send this to a friend in the same boat.

Real Estate Comps, Explained Simply

"Comps" is short for comparable sales—recently sold homes that are similar to the property you're buying or selling.

The idea is straightforward. If a three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow on a similar street in your neighbourhood sold for $620,000 last month, that sale tells you something real about what a similar home is worth today.

Comps ground home pricing in actual transactions, not in what a seller hopes to get or what a listing website's algorithm estimates.

Real estate agents, appraisers, buyers, and sellers all rely on comparables. They're the foundation of nearly every pricing decision in residential real estate in Calgary, across Canada, and everywhere else.

What Real Estate Comps Tell You About Fair Market Value

Here's a term you'll hear a lot in real estate: fair market value. It means what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller when neither is under pressure. It's not the asking price. It's not what a seller thinks their home is worth. It's what the market actually supports.

Real estate comps are how you figure out fair market value. By looking at what similar homes have recently sold for, you build a picture of what buyers and sellers consider fair in today's market.

Understanding real estate comps is essentially understanding how home values get determined in the real world. This, in turn, helps you calculate what kind of home you can afford.

Who Uses Comps, and Why It Matters to You

Real estate agents pull comps from the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and use them to create a Comparative Market Analysis, or CMA. More on how those work later, but CMAs help agents advise both buyers and sellers.

Buyers use comps to avoid overpaying. Before you make an offer, knowing what similar homes actually sold for tells you whether the asking price is a fair price or whether you have room to negotiate toward a lower price.

Sellers use comps to set a realistic selling price. Price too high and the home sits on the market, where the days on market become a red flag and the seller can be forced to accept less than the initial fair market value. Price too low and you leave money behind. The right price, backed by solid real estate comps, attracts serious buyers faster and leads to smoother negotiations.

Appraisers use comps to tell lenders what a home is worth. Their job is to deliver an objective, evidence-based number—not a seller's wishful estimate or a buyer's emotional overbid. The formal term for this process is the sales comparison approach: appraisers identify similar properties, compare them to the subject home, adjust for differences, and arrive at a supportable market value.

If you're a buyer getting a mortgage, your lender will require a real estate appraisal before approving the loan. If the appraiser's number comes in lower than your offer—a real risk when trying to win a bidding war—you'll need to either renegotiate the purchase price or cover the gap yourself. Using comps for offers and pricing helps buyers and sellers avoid this renegotiation scenario.

What Makes a Good Comp? 6 Important Factors

Not every recent sale counts as a useful comparable. A home that sold last month can still be a poor comparison if it differs too much from yours. Here are the factors that determine whether a sale is actually a useful data point:

1. Same property type. Single-family homes compare to single-family homes. Condos compare to condos. Townhouses compare to townhouses. Comparing homes across different property types introduces too many variables to be useful.
2. Location. The closer, the better. Aim for sales within the same neighbourhood or within about 1 km of the property. In Calgary's dense inner city, even a few blocks can mean a different price range. In rural areas, you may need to expand your search, but keep the neighbourhood character as similar as possible. If there are value-affecting location factors like transit stops, busy roads, school catchment borders, or views, you'll need to take those into account.
3. Recent sale date. Markets shift. A sale from 18 months ago may reflect completely different conditions—different interest rates, different inventory, different buyer demand. The more recent, the better. If you can hit 3–5 comps in the past 90 days, go with that. If you can't, extend to 3 months and try again. Then 6 months. Weigh your more recent comps more heavily than less recent comps.
4. Similar size. A 1,400 sq ft home compared to a 2,200 sq ft home won't give you reliable numbers. Aim to stay within about 10–15% of the subject property's size. The number of storeys matters, too; a two-storey home is perceived differently by buyers than a one-storey home.
5. Comparable bedrooms and bathrooms. Bedrooms drive buyer demand. A four-bedroom home appeals to a different pool of buyers than a two-bedroom, even if the square footage looks similar. Match these as closely as you can.
6. Similar condition and age. Recent renovations matter a lot. A home with an updated kitchen, new bathrooms, value-adding features, or recently replaced major systems like a furnace and roof will command a higher value than a similar home with outdated features. When reviewing comparables, try to get a sense of the condition at the time of sale. Listing photos and property descriptions help here.

How to Find Comps in Calgary (and Across Canada)

Finding comparables has become much more accessible over the past decade. Here are your main options.

Use Real Estate Websites

Sites like Realtor.ca let you search recently sold properties by area. Filter for "sold" listings rather than active ones—sold prices reflect what buyers actually paid. You can narrow results by property type, size, bedrooms, and neighbourhood. This is a practical starting point for finding comparables on your own.

But wait: why are all these sold listings saying "price unavailable"?

Canada's provinces have restrictions on who can access "sold" data, for privacy reasons. Depending on the province, you may need to create an account on certain websites, such as Zolo or HonestDoor, or pay a fee to a government office to find out how much a home sold for. This makes things more difficult for FSBO sellers.

Even these sites might not have all the data you're looking for, depending on local MLS policy and fees for syndicating this data to third parties.

Ask a Real Estate Agent

The MLS, or Multiple Listing Service, is built by and for agents and has the most complete and accurate sales data available—and it's only fully accessible through licensed real estate agents. An agent can pull comparables specific to your street, neighbourhood, or community and explain why some sales matter more than others.

A real estate agent can see things on the MLS that don't make it into the public-facing data. There are many different MLSs across Canada, each with its own policies, so we'll speak in general here, but this may include:

• Listing history, including withdrawn or expired listings and images, for as far back as the local real estate board has data
• List of inclusions and exclusions (ex. furniture or appliances sold with the house)
• Seller concessions
• Whether a listing was owner-occupied or vacant
• Tax assessment details
• Agent remarks (ex. seller motivation, closing preferences, property defects and disclosures)

Among other data points.

Many agents will provide a free CMA without obligation. If you're serious about finding comparables that will actually hold up, this is the most reliable route.

Check Public Property Records

In Alberta, sold home data is publicly available. You can access it through the Alberta Land Titles Spatial Information System for a fee. This is helpful for verifying data or checking sales on specific addresses.

Province-by-province access in Canada: Access to sold home data varies by province. Alberta, BC, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick all offer online access to recent sales data, though some require account registration. Quebec, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island offer paid access only. Manitoba and Saskatchewan offer partial data. Nunavut, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories don't currently have public online options—contact a local agent or the territorial real estate association directly.

One thing to know about public records: they sometimes lag actual sales by a few weeks, and they may not capture all the nuances. For example, a seller agreeing to cover closing costs effectively lowers what the buyer actually paid. That's one reason MLS data, accessed through an agent, tends to be more complete.

When Finding Comparables Gets Tricky

Real estate comps work best when there's plenty of recent, similar sales data nearby. Sometimes that's not the case.

Unique properties: A custom-built home, a historic character house, or a property with an unusual layout can be hard to compare directly to anything nearby. In these situations, agents and appraisers expand the search radius, adjust more aggressively for differences in property features, or look at price-per-square-foot trends across a wider area to determine value.

Thin markets: Rural areas or smaller communities with few recent sales present the same challenge. You may need to look back further in time or cast a wider geographic net. When you do, weigh older or more distant comparables less heavily than recent, close ones.

Fast-moving markets: In a market where conditions shift quickly due to interest rate changes or inventory swings, a comp from six months ago may understate or overstate the current value. It adds another layer of complexity.

The takeaway: when comparables are limited or conditions are changing quickly, lean on an agent who tracks your local real estate market daily.

CMAs: What a Calgary Agent Does With Comps

When a Calgary agent sits down to price a home or help a buyer evaluate a listing, they're typically preparing a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA).

A CMA isn't just a list of nearby sales. It's an interpretation. An agent will pull several sold comparables, walk through how each one compares to the subject property, and explain the adjustments they've made. They'll flag if a particular comparable was distressed or happened under unusual circumstances. They'll factor in current inventory levels and how quickly similar homes are moving in that specific community.

They're also accounting for things that raw data can't always show, like whether recent renovations were done well or whether today's market conditions have shifted since the most recent comparable sale.

The result is a price range grounded in evidence—not a guess.

If you're preparing to list a home in Calgary or want a clearer sense of fair market value in a neighbourhood you're targeting, asking an agent for a CMA is one of the most useful things you can do. Most will provide one at no cost, giving you the informed basis you need to make confident decisions.

For informational purposes only. Always consult with a licensed real estate professional before proceeding with any real estate transaction.

Understanding Real Estate Comps

Real estate comps take the emotion out of pricing. They answer the question every buyer and seller eventually asks: what is this home actually worth?

Start with sold comparable properties, stay recent, stay close, and use at least three comparables. If the data gets complicated—or if you're making a decision worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, not just satisfying curiosity—a local agent with MLS access is worth talking to.

Curious what comparable homes in your Calgary neighbourhood have sold for recently? Reach out to an agent who closely tracks our market trends. A 15-minute conversation can save you a lot of uncertainty.