Most students in Edmonton end up choosing between four things: a University of Alberta residence place, a private student residence like this one, a room in a shared house or apartment, or a studio of your own. The monthly figures are closer together than people expect. What separates them is the lease you sign, what happens when a roommate leaves, and how far you walk in January.
This page lays out all four honestly, including where we are the wrong answer.
University of Alberta residence
The institutional option, run by the University. Its advantages are real: you are inside the campus system, placement is designed around first-year students, and everything is handled by one office.
The constraints are structural. A residence place is tied to your registration, so it moves when your studies move. Availability follows the University’s own application cycle rather than yours. And if you are arriving from outside Canada, or between programmes, or on a term that does not fit the academic calendar, the fit gets awkward.
We are not part of the University of Alberta. Neither of our buildings is University housing, and a room here does not depend on your registration. University Tower carries that name from its own history — it was a University residence years ago and has been privately owned for a long time. Your lease is with us.
A private student residence
What we are — see the rooms and their prices. A furnished private bedroom in a four-bedroom suite, on a nine-month lease that covers the academic year, with heat, water, power and Wi-Fi in the rent.
The thing worth understanding is the suite structure, because it is what makes the price work. You get your own bedroom with a door that locks and a bed already made. You share one bathroom and one furnished kitchen with the three people in the other bedrooms. It is not a studio, and anyone describing a room here as having a private bathroom is describing somewhere else.
| Garneau Towers | University Tower | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 8510 111 St NW | 8515 112 St NW |
| Cheapest room | $560 every four weeks | $700 every four weeks |
| Dearest room | $800 every four weeks | $880 every four weeks |
| Fitness centre | Yes | No |
| Private balcony rooms | No | Yes |
| Walk to the Education building | 7 minutes | 5 minutes |
The two buildings are about a block apart. Garneau Towers has the fitness centre, the two laundry rooms, the lounge and the cheaper rooms; University Tower sits right on the campus boundary and has the only rooms with a balcony. The suites are the same shape in both: four bedrooms, one bathroom, one kitchen.
One caveat that catches people: the gym, laundry rooms and lounge at Garneau Towers are for Garneau Towers residents. A room at University Tower does not include them, a hundred metres away or not. If the gym matters, take a room at Garneau Towers.
A room in a shared house or apartment
Usually the cheapest headline rent in Edmonton, and the most variable experience.
What the headline hides is that the rent is rarely the whole bill. Heat and power in an Edmonton winter are not a rounding error, and they are usually yours. Furniture is usually yours too — a bed, a desk and a chair bought in September and sold at a loss in April. Internet is another account in your name.
If that arrangement is what you are weighing, coliving in Edmonton covers how the lease structure differs. The structural risk is the other people. On a joint tenancy, one person leaving mid-year is your problem: their share of the rent does not disappear, and the search for a replacement lands on whoever is still in the house. That is the trade for the lower number.
A studio of your own
Complete privacy, the highest cost, and every bill and every piece of furniture in your name. It suits people who genuinely need to live alone and know it. For a first year away from home it is usually more solitude than expected, at more money than expected.
What actually decides it
Once the four are side by side, three questions do most of the work.
How far do you want to walk in January? Edmonton winters make distance-to-campus the most underrated line in a housing budget. From University Tower the Education building is five minutes and the hospital four. From Garneau Towers, one block east, the same walks are seven and six. Main Quad, at the far side of campus, is twelve to fourteen. A cheaper room forty minutes out is not cheaper once you have priced a January bus pass and the mornings you do not go in.
What happens if a housemate leaves? In a shared house on a joint lease it is your problem. Here it is ours — your lease is for your bedroom.
What is actually included? Compare like with like — how it works sets out the lease, the deposit and the fees in full. Our four-weekly figure includes heat, water, power, Wi-Fi, the furniture, the bed made up, laundry in the building and on-site maintenance. There is no application fee, no service fee and no utility bill on top. Set that against a shared-house rent and add back everything it does not cover.