Former Finance Minister Joe Oliver said in a Financial Post editorial that increased foreign buying is going to exacerbate an overheated real estate market in Toronto, and thinks Ontario should follow in B.C.’s footsteps by imposing its own tax on foreign homebuyers.
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The number of foreign buyers purchasing real estate in British Columbia dramatically dropped after the government instituted a 15 per cent foreign buyer tax on August 2, new figures show.
Everything you need to know about real estate reform in B.C.
The B.C. government’s new 15 per cent tax on home sales involving foreign nationals took effect on August 2.
The total value of sales involving foreign buyers fell to 0.7 per cent for the August 2 to 31 period.
The precise influence of foreign money in the housing market had been largely a mystery, but the provincial government began tracking those purchases in June.
On July 29, more than $850 million in residential property transactions involving foreign nationals in Metro Vancouver was registered at the Land Title Office.
The total value of those deals were $46.9 million, which amounts to $2.5 million in additional property transfer tax revenue.
The B.C. government is out with its latest set of data on foreign buyers in the province.
The additional property transfer tax was announced on July 25 and took effect August 2, applying an additional 15% tax on transfers of residential real estate involving foreign purchasers in Metro Vancouver.
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In Metro Vancouver, 2,034 transactions worth $2.3 billion involved foreign nationals during that period, representing 9.3 per cent of the almost 22,000 transactions and 11.5 per cent of the $20.6 billion that changed hands.
