High River, Alberta
High River is the Alberta town that publishes what Alberta towns usually do not — the assessed value of all 7,460 of its parcels, and the registered owner of its institutional ones — and the most interesting thing in that record is land the Town bought from the province for a dollar after the 2013 flood and then zoned so that nothing can ever be built on it.
8 buildings · 4 with an owner established · 11 sources · 7 tier A · 1 tier B · prepared 2026-10-03
The register is Alberta's and the price is the province's: a certified copy of a certificate of title costs $10 under the Tariff of Fees Regulation (AR 120/2000, current as of 1 October 2026), a name search under s.17 of the Land Titles Act costs $10 for a nil result or $15 for a summary list of titles found, and there is no bulk owner file at any price. SPIN2 sells those titles today and retires in December 2026, when ARLO becomes the system of record. What makes High River different is the other half of the question. Alberta's open parcel values vary municipality by municipality — Airdrie, Canmore and Medicine Hat publish none — and High River publishes a full annual assessment layer through its own GIS, Parcels_Assessment_2026Mar16_FINAL, 7,460 parcels carrying a roll number, a civic address, a land-use district, an area, a title number, a title registration date and a grand total assessed value. It carries no owner name, and its own metadata says why: the internal version of the layer is described as "Internal parcel data with owner and contact information", and the public one has that column stripped. But the Town also publishes a School_Parcels layer that was not stripped, and it names registered owners — which is how this record can state that one of the town's schools stands on land registered to the Town, and another on a title still in the name of a school district dissolved decades ago.
The marquee buildings
The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.
| Building | Use | Owner | Owner type | Last price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High River General Hospital 560 9 Avenue SW |
Institutional | Not established a paid title search would answer it The most valuable parcel in High River, and it is a hospital: $42,124,000 on 5.73 acres, roll 2733000, title registered 20 April 2009, legal 9410586;52;15, in the Traditional Neighbourhood District. That is 1.4% of the whole town's assessed value on one parcel, and two and a half times the next-largest school site. The address is identified as High River General Hospital by OpenStreetMap's building record. The Town's assessment layer carries no owner column and its Hospital layer returns a feature with every attribute null, so the registered owner is a $10 title away and was not bought. |
Not established | —A |
| Unidentified parcel, 660 7 Street NW 660 7 Street NW |
Mixed use | Not established a paid title search would answer it The second-most valuable parcel in town and this record cannot say what it is. $26,852,300 on 4.14 acres, roll 1908100, Neighbourhood Centre District, title registered 18 July 2016, legal 1113168;2;1. No named feature exists at the address in OpenStreetMap, the Town's facility layers do not cover it, and Overpass refused every query. It is published here as an address and a number because that is what the public record supports: a $26.9 million building whose owner and use are both unestablished in a town that publishes its entire roll. |
Not established | —A |
| Highwood High School 1401 10 Street SE |
Institutional | Foothills School Division No. 38 $16,825,000 on 29.1 acres — the largest site in town after the hospital. The Town's own School_Parcels layer names the registered owner as "FOOTHILLS SCHOOL DIVISION NO 38.", title 101208095007, registered 13 July 2010, in the Montrose subdivision, and the assessment layer prices it. OpenStreetMap identifies the building as Ecole secondaire Highwood High School with Foothills School Division as operator. This is one of the few places in Alberta where a municipality publishes a registered owner against a civic address for free. |
Institution | —A |
| Notre Dame Collegiate 1500 High Country Drive NW |
Institutional | The Board of Trustees of the Christ the Redeemer Catholic Separate Regional Division No. 3 $10,652,200 on 7.49 acres, roll 2967500, title registered 20 September 2016. The School_Parcels layer records the Catholic division as registered owner of a 14.99-acre site at 4 21 Street SE (title 161222585, registered 19 September 2016, Sunrise Meadows) and OpenStreetMap names Notre Dame Collegiate at 1500 High Country Drive NW with Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools as operator. The division is therefore the named owner of Catholic school land in town; which of the two parcels carries the Collegiate building itself is not stated by either source. |
Institution | —B |
| Ecole Senator Riley Middle School 338 1 Avenue SE |
Institutional | The Board of Trustees of the High River School District No. 144 The oldest live title in this record and the most revealing. $10,250,000 on 10.22 acres, title 110J225, registered 27 June 1958, and the Town's School_Parcels layer still names the registered owner as "THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE HIGH RIVER SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 144." while recording the assessed party as "FOOTHILLS SCHOOL DIV #38". OpenStreetMap names the building Ecole Senator Riley Middle School, operated by Foothills School Division. Alberta's school districts were amalgamated into divisions in the 1990s; the title was never redone, so the school is operated by one body and owned on paper by another. |
Institution | —A |
| Ecole Joe Clark School 1208 9 Avenue SE |
Institutional | The Town of High River A school on municipal land. The Town's School_Parcels layer names the registered owner as "THE TOWN OF HIGH RIVER.", title 741107052, registered 21 November 1974, 7.74 acres in the Sunshine Meadows subdivision, with the Town also recorded as the assessed party at 309B MacLeod Trail SW. OpenStreetMap names the school Ecole Joe Clark School and gives Foothills School Division as operator. Assessed at $8,970,700. The Town owns the ground and the division runs the school. |
Government | —A |
| Ranchland Mall 30 3 Avenue SE |
Retail | Not established a paid title search would answer it The downtown mall, assessed at $6,310,400 on the 0.15-acre parcel at 30 3 Avenue SE — a Central Business District roll (363100) whose title dates to 24 October 2011 on a 1920s-era plan, 2245E;9;15,16. OpenStreetMap identifies Ranchland Mall at the address along with Scotiabank, Shoppers Drug Mart and a Canada Post outlet operated inside Shoppers. A mall normally spans several titles, so this is one parcel of it rather than the whole asset, and no owner is named because Alberta sells the owner one title at a time. |
Not established | —A |
| Canalta High River 1512 13 Avenue SE |
Hotel | Not established a paid title search would answer it The town's largest hotel parcel in the assessment layer: $6,149,500 on 1.71 acres, roll 2843000, Neighbourhood Centre District, title registered 10 January 2007. OpenStreetMap records the building as a hotel named Canalta High River. Canalta is a Drumheller-based hotel group, but a brand on a building is not a title: no document opened for this record states who owns the land, so the owner is blank. |
Not established | —A |
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
High River publishes an annual parcel assessment layer and has done since at least 2019, which makes it the most transparent small town in this batch on value — and the only one where a reader can rank the ground. Two cautions the Town does not print: the layer repeats a single grand total against every unit of a multi-title property, so the raw sum of 7,148 valued rows is $4.37 billion against an equalized grand total of $3.05 billion, and deduplicating by legal description and value brings it to $3.46 billion across 6,784 distinct legal/value pairs. The figures below use the deduplicated set and say so.
Who owns the town
At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.
The largest landowner in High River is the Town, and the reason is the flood. On 20 June 2013 the Highwood River put most of the town under water; the province bought out properties in the floodway, and then handed the land back. Mayor Craig Snodgrass told HighRiverOnline in July 2022 that "The Town's bought the Beachwood area, Rio Vista and Wallaceville for a dollar each" and that "The Environmental Reserve bylaw places all of the floodway lands that we've acquired from the Province of Alberta, it places all of those lands under the Environmental Reserve designation so that no development can occur in those areas" — a designation the article states the province insisted on as a condition of the transfer. Three former neighbourhoods are now municipal land that can never be built on again. After the Town, the landowners are the two school authorities, and after them a listed developer.
| Name | Type | Holding |
|---|---|---|
| Town of High River Three flooded neighbourhoods transferred from the Province of Alberta to the Town for a dollar apiece and designated Environmental Reserve by bylaw so that no development can occur. The Town also holds the 7.74-acre school site at 1208 9 Avenue SE outright (title 741107052, registered 1974) with Foothills School Division operating the school on it, a 0.23-acre parcel in the Golf Course subdivision, and the Bob Snodgrass Recreation Complex & Cargill Field House site at 228 12 Avenue SE — 13.25 acres assessed at $21,841,800 on a title registered 8 April 1974. |
Government | Beachwood, Rio Vista and Wallaceville at $1 each, plus school and recreation landA |
| Foothills School Division No. 38 and the High River School District No. 144 The Town's own School_Parcels layer names both: Foothills School Division No. 38 as registered owner of 1401 10 St SE (29.1 acres, $16.8M) and of 409 MacLeod Trail SW (6.97 acres, $7.8M, title registered 1994, the Old Rodeo Grounds subdivision), and the long-dissolved High River School District No. 144 still on title at 338 1 Avenue SE (10.22 acres, $10.25M, title 110J225 registered 1958) with Division 38 as the assessed party. |
Institution | 3 sites, 46.3 acres, $34.9 million assessedA |
| The Board of Trustees of the Christ the Redeemer Catholic Separate Regional Division No. 3 Registered owner on title 161222585, registered 19 September 2016, per the Town's School_Parcels layer. The division's Notre Dame Collegiate at 1500 High Country Drive NW is assessed at $10,652,200 on 7.49 acres. Catholic school land in High River is therefore a documented holding of about 22 acres across two sites. |
Institution | 14.99 acres at 4 21 Street SE, Sunrise MeadowsB |
| Dream Unlimited Corp. The Town's live development-permit layer records Homes by Dream stripping and grading Montrose phases 5 and 6 and filing single-detached permits on Montrose Crescent SE. Dream's High River acreage is not published and is not stated here; what the public record supports is that a TSX-listed developer is the party building out the town's largest growth subdivision. |
Public company | Montrose phases 5 and 6A |
Where property meets office
Recorded only where a public record states it — a disclosure registry, council minutes, a land-use decision. Stated as fact, with nothing inferred from it.
| Holder | Office | Holding |
|---|---|---|
| Town of High River | Mayor and Council | Beachwood, Rio Vista and Wallaceville, acquired from the Province of Alberta for $1 each and designated Environmental Reserve Stated as a neutral fact of public record. Mayor Craig Snodgrass is quoted by HighRiverOnline (20 July 2022) describing the purchases and the bylaw: "The Environmental Reserve bylaw places all of the floodway lands that we've acquired from the Province of Alberta... under the Environmental Reserve designation so that no development can occur in those areas." The article states that the designation "was not only a desire expressed by the town and the current and two previous councils, but a stipulation that the province insisted on before going ahead with the agreement." An earlier report (OkotoksOnline, 26 May 2021) records the same mayor saying the lands "will be sold back to the Town for a dollar" and "they'll be left as nature lands and floodways". No inference of any kind is drawn. A |
Who builds the houses
New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.
High River's new housing is concentrated in two subdivisions and the Town publishes who is applying to build in them. Its ActiveDevelopmentPoints layer carries an Applicant field on every live development permit, which is as close to a builder list as any town in this batch gets — with the caveat that an applicant is whoever filed the form, so the same field returns architects (Gravity Architecture, MILE Architecture, Tricor Design Group), sign companies and private individuals alongside builders. Only companies are named below; the private individuals in that field are not. The pattern is clear: Dream Unlimited's Homes by Dream is stripping and grading Montrose phases 5 and 6 and filing single-detached permits along Montrose Crescent, Hopewell Residential is doing the same along Montane Link and Montrose Green, and the rental side is larger than the ownership side — four separate applications on the layer are for 72, 99, 117 and 146 rental units, plus 108 and 64 more.
| Name | Type | Live development permits on the Town's layer |
|---|---|---|
| Homes by Dream (Dream Unlimited Corp.) The Town's live development-permit layer lists "Homes by Dream", "Dream" and "Dream Developer" as applicant on a stripping-and-grading permit described as "Montrose Phase 5 & 6" and on several single-detached dwellings along Montrose Crescent SE. Montrose is also the subdivision the Town's School_Parcels layer places Highwood High School in. Dream is a TSX-listed developer; the layer records the applicant, not the landowner. |
Public company | Montrose phases 5 and 6, plus single-detached permits at 332, 348 and 412 Montrose Crescent SEA |
| Hopewell Residential Named as applicant on five live permits, including single-detached dwellings with basement suites and with frontage variances under the Town's blanket variance. Montane Link appears in the layer with three further single-detached applications. Applicant, not registered owner. |
Private company | permits at 126 Montane Link SE and 418, 420, 421 Montrose Green/Crescent SEA |
| Jenga Homes Inc, Farrelly Homes Ltd, Atica Homes, Aspen Brook Homes, Ishaan Homes Grouped because each appears once or twice. Jenga Homes Inc filed a 4-plex at 68 8 Ave SE; Farrelly Homes Ltd a duplex with basement suites at 102 8 Avenue SE; Atica Homes, Aspen Brook Homes and Ishaan Homes single-detached dwellings at 894, 919 and 815 Hampshire Crescent/Bay NE. The useful content is the membership — small Calgary-region builders doing infill and Hampton Hills lots — rather than any ranking. |
Private company | one to two permits each; a 4-plex, duplexes with basement suites and single-detached homes on Hampshire Crescent/Bay NEA |
| Habitat for Humanity Southern Alberta Included because a charity appearing twice on a 55-row permit layer is a real share of a small town's output, and because Habitat holds title to what it builds until it is sold. Applicant on two duplex permits in the Town's live layer. |
Institution | 2 permits — duplex halves at 831A and 831B 6 Street SWA |
| Not established — the owners of the rental projects Six separate rental developments on the Town's live permit layer, at 1101 16 St SE, 1230 3 St SE, 1227 3 St SE (146 units plus four commercial buildings), 2104 2 Ave NE and two with no address assigned. Three list no applicant at all and the others list design firms. In a town that started 59 homes in 2025 this is the dominant form of new housing, and no open source names who will own it. |
Private company | 72 + 99 + 117 + 146 + 108 + 64 units in the pipelineA |
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
High River's non-residential assessment is $333 million, 10.9% of its base, and the Central Business District holds only $255 million of assessed value across 328 parcels — an average of $778,000 per downtown parcel. The biggest commercial numbers are in the Neighbourhood Centre District on the edges, where the grocery and big-box pads sit, and in the Service & Employment District along 24 Street SE. No REIT or listed landlord was found holding High River retail: Primaris's 26-centre leasing table has nothing here, and Melcor's 2025 raw-land table lists no High River acreage.
| Name | Type | High River holding |
|---|---|---|
| Government of Canada (all custodians) Canada Post owns the High River Post Office at Pioneer Square, T0L 1B0 — Crown Owned, 0.11 ha, 346 square metres — making it one of only two Crown-owned federal parcels among the five cities in this batch. The RCMP leases its detachment at 1104 14 St SE (869 sq m) and Farm Credit Canada leases 10 square metres at 335 MacLeod Trail SW, which is the smallest federal floor area in the directory for any of these towns. Open Government Licence - Canada. |
Government | 3 properties; 1 Crown-owned at 0.11 ha, 2 leasedA |
| Unidentified owner, 1400 and 1401 10 Street SE The town's industrial core and its largest contiguous assessed value outside the hospital: 1400 10 St SE is a 24.85-acre Service & Employment District parcel assessed at $11,836,400 with a title registered 8 August 2005, and the adjoining 1401 10 St SE is the 29.1-acre Highwood High School site. The Service & Employment District as a whole is 76 parcels and $113.5 million. No owner is published for the industrial side. |
Private company | $28.7 million across 54 acresA |
| Unidentified owner, 1103A-T 18 Street SE A Neighbourhood Centre District retail parcel with a multi-unit address range (1103A to 1103T), title registered 24 October 2000, roll 2854000. OpenStreetMap places a No Frills supermarket, a Mobil fuel station and a cafe at the address — a grocery-anchored strip centre. Loblaw's banner on the box says nothing about the land, and no filing opened for this record names the landlord. |
Private company | $6,990,400 on 3.2 acresA |
| Not established — 307 11 Avenue NW, 'The Grain Elevator' A live development permit on the Town's layer describes "Project Name: The Grain Elevator - Four (4) storey, Multi unit residential building (20 units) - Permitted Use in the NCD District" with status "Construction in progress". The applicant on the permit is a private individual and is therefore not named here. The adjacent parcel at 309 11 Avenue NW, 0.35 acres with a title registered 15 July 2014, is assessed at $6,464,100 — the highest value per acre in the town's top twenty. |
Private company | 4 storeys, 20 units; parcel at 309 11 Ave NW assessed at $6,464,100A |
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- What stands at 660 7 Street NW, the second-most valuable parcel in High River at $26,852,300, and who owns it. No named feature exists at the address in any source opened.
- The owner of every parcel in town except the five that the Town's School_Parcels layer happens to name. Alberta sells the owner at $10 a title and publishes no bulk file.
- How many properties the province bought in High River's floodway after the 2013 flood, and what it paid. Secondary reports put it at about 94 properties and $92.9 million; no Government of Alberta page carrying those figures could be opened, and open.alberta.ca returns only a Highwood River flood study for the search.
- What is at 901A MacLeod Trail SW ($13,613,000 on 3.0 acres, title registered 1982), 129 4 Avenue SW ($10,482,880 on 0.38 acres in the Central Business District), 1212 5 Street SE and 1220 1 Street SE. Nominatim returned a Co-op convenience and fuel site for 1220 1 St SE and nothing for the others.
- Who owns the Ranchland Mall, the Canalta hotel and the 18 Street SE grocery centre — the three largest identified commercial assets in town.
- Any reliable count of homes built in High River by builder. The Town's permit layer names applicants on 55 live files only, and Alberta's Builder Registry will not answer a scripted search.
- Whether Cargill's High River beef plant lies inside the town boundary. The Bob Snodgrass Recreation Complex carries the Cargill Field House name, but the plant itself was not geocoded against the municipal boundary for this record and is therefore not claimed either way.
- ARLO's fee schedule, and therefore the price of an Alberta title after SPIN2 retires in December 2026.
Sources
- Tariff of Fees Regulation, AR 120/2000 (Land Titles Act), current as of October 1, 2026, s.14 — Alberta King's Printer · openA
- Modernizing Land Titles — December 2026 transition to ARLO; in-person service in Calgary and Edmonton still paused — Government of Alberta · openA
- Parcels_Assessment_2026Mar16_FINAL, layer 0 — 7,460 parcels with roll number, civic address, land-use district, area, title number, title registration date and GRANDTOTAL_FULL — Town of High River · openA
- School_Parcels, layer 0 — registered owner (name1_t), assessed party (name_b), title number and registration date per school site — Town of High River · openA
- ActiveDevelopmentPoints, layer 0 — 55 live development permits with applicant, type, civic address, description and status — Town of High River · openA
- Directory of Federal Real Property, full dataset (High River municipality rows) — Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- Town of High River makes big land purchase for little cost (20 July 2022) and Province Getting Land And Homes Back To High River (26 May 2021) — HighRiverOnline.com and OkotoksOnline.com, Golden West Broadcasting, by Don McCracken · openA
- Property assessments by municipality (Total Equalized Assessment) 2026, Building Permits, Housing Starts and Dwelling Units for High River, CSD 4806006 — Alberta Municipal Affairs / Alberta Regional Dashboard · openA
- Table 98-10-0002: Population and dwelling counts, census subdivisions, 2021 (CSD 4806006) — Statistics Canada · openA
- Address and building records for 560 9 Avenue SW, 228 12 Avenue SE, 338 1 Avenue SE, 1401 10 Street SE, 1500 High Country Drive NW, 1208 9 Avenue SE, 30 3 Avenue SE, 1512 13 Avenue SE and 1103 18 Street SE, High River — OpenStreetMap via Nominatim · openC
- Project listing of 971 Alberta major projects (no project in High River) — Alberta Major Projects, Government of Alberta · openA