A look at the true impact of a foreign-buyer tax and a registry of property owners
When introducing measures aimed at curbing the skyrocketing price of real estate, governments are especially fond of those that can be summarized for voters in a sentence. In British Columbia, two of those measures have come with the added benefit of the government being able to say that it was the first in Canada.
In July of 2016, foreign buyers accounted for almost 30 per cent of real estate transactions in the city of Burnaby, and 27 per cent of sales in Richmond. In August, when the tax came into effect, foreign buyers made up one per cent of buyers in Burnaby, and two per cent in Richmond.
Research published last year by Dr. Rahman and his colleague Jabed Tomal, a statistician who teaches at the same university, found that prices stopped skyrocketing in Chilliwack when the B.C. government expanded its foreign-buyer tax to this Vancouver suburb in 2018, while Kamloops – a similar market further inland that has remained exempt from the levy – saw its home prices continue to rise rapidly over the next two years.
The sluggish rollout is no surprise to those familiar with how complex and multilayered property ownership can be.
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