
Foreign Buyers in Toronto, Vancouver Own Less Than 5% Of Homes and Condos
Foreign Buyers in Toronto, Vancouver Own Less Than 5% Of Homes and Condos
“Foreign ownership is a thing; it’s not the thing.”
Foreign buyers make up a minuscule portion of the overall housing market in this country, new research shows, but what they own is more expensive and newer than the average Canadian homeowner.
And there are indications foreign buyers are moving out of the traditional bases of Toronto and Vancouver and into new cities.
Non-residents owned 3.4 per cent of all residential properties in Toronto and 4.8 per cent of residential properties in Vancouver, according to new housing statistics by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and Statistics Canada.
Largely what foreign buyers scoop up are newer, more expensive homes. In Vancouver, non-resident owners, as they’re known, had homes valued on average at $2.3 million compared to $1.6 million for the owners whose primary residence was in Canada.
Stepping into condo market
In Toronto, the average detached home owned by a non-resident was valued at $944,100 compared to $840,600 for residents, a difference of $103,500 or 12.3 per cent.
Foreign owners are stepping into the big-city condo market where, again, what they own is more expensive than the what residents own. In and around Toronto, the average assessed value for a condo owned by a non-resident was $420,500, compared to $385,900 for a resident. In Vancouver, the figures are $691,500 and $526,700, respectively.
The figures mark the first time that CMHC and Statistics Canada have measured foreign ownership in the country’s hot housing market to see how much influence foreign buyers have over skyrocketing prices.
Ontario and B.C. have rules in place to dampen foreign interest in buying properties as investments.
The data from CMHC suggests that the foreign buyer tax in both provinces has shifted foreign ownership to other parts of the country.
The CMHC survey found that downtown Montreal and the city’s Nun’s Island had the largest increases in the share of non-resident owners over the last year. On Nun’s Island, the rate went from 4.3 per cent in 2016 to 7.6 per cent this year; on the island of Montreal, the rate went from 0.9 per cent to 1.5 per cent.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.