Extra Taxes Barely Deter Asian Buyers
Photo: Flickr / Hamza Butt
For both concerned consumers as well as policy experts, it
was hoped that the adoption of a foreign buyer tax amongst other new
regulations would prevent an excessive amount of foreign buyers from buying
properties within Canada’s hottest property markets. According to a new report
released by China’s biggest online real estate browsing community, Chinese
buyers are still heavily interested in purchasing properties in Canada for the
purposes of investment. According to a statement released by the company’s president,
Chinese buyers still consider Canada a solid place for real estate investment,
even when taking the various foreign buyer taxes implemented in both Ontario
and British Columbia into account.
Based on data released by Juwai, the cities that held the
biggest sway for Chinese buyers were Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Ottawa.
In addition, Canada is considered to be the fourth most popular destination for
buying real estate out of ten countries, based on a survey undertaken by the
company. The other states on the list from most to least desirable for the year
of 2017 include the United States, Australia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, New
Zealand, Germany, Malaysia and Spain. Singapore no longer is on the list this
year, despite being in the top ten for the last three years – perhaps because
of its heavily restricted buying policies concerning non-residents. On top of a
fifteen percent foreign buyer tax, the city-state also does not allow the
purchase of anything larger than a condominium property for buyers who do not
actually live there.
In recent years, due to the threat of
unaffordability looming in the country’s hottest markets – most notable in the
Metro Vancouver and Greater Toronto Area – both the federal and provincial
governments have been looking at measures to deter home prices from ballooning
even further. As a result, the British Columbia government instituted a fifteen
percent foreign buyer tax last August, which had a significant impact on home
sales volume as well as property prices over the last several months. Recently,
however, real estate trends have been steadily growing upwards once again, and
recent statistics have even shown that the most expensive home prices have
already swung past previous records set before the tax was put in place. In the
Golden Horseshoe area, meanwhile, where the Ontario government has also
implemented a foreign buyer tax in response to ballooning home price trends
very similar to the ones experienced in Vancouver, evidence suggests that
foreign investment has not decreased significantly either.
Published Date: Oct 14 2017