Foreign Buying Plummets in Vancouver After New Property Tax

(Bloomberg) -- Foreign investors dropped out of Vancouver’s property market last month after the provincial government imposed a 15 percent surcharge to stem a surge in home prices.

Overseas buyers accounted for less than 1 percent of the C$6.5 billion ($5 billion) of residential real estate purchases between Aug. 2 to 31 in Metro Vancouver, according to data released by British Columbia’s Ministry of Finance on Thursday. In the roughly seven weeks prior to that, they’d represented 17 percent of transactions by value.

The Canadian city, nestled between the water and soaring mountains, has long been a favored destination among global property investors, who have been blamed for fomenting escalating prices. The new tax went into effect Aug. 2 amid public pressure in the region, where home prices are almost double the national average of C$473,105.

The plunge in foreign participation joins other signs of a slowdown in Canada’s most expensive property market. Vancouver home sales fell 26 percent in August from a year earlier, while the average price of a detached property declined to C$1.47 million, the lowest price since September 2015, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

The latest data shows that overseas buyers snapped up C$2.3 billion of homes in the seven weeks before the tax was imposed, and less than C$50 million in the next four weeks. The government began collecting data on citizenship in home purchases on June 10. The ministry said auditors are checking citizenship or permanent residency declarations made by buyers and also reviewing transactions to determine if any were structured to avoid tax.

Across the province, the participation of foreigners dropped to 1.4 percent of transactions by value in August, from 13 percent in the preceding seven weeks.

British Columbia has raised C$2.5 million in revenue from the new levy since it took effect. Budget forecasts released last week indicated that the Pacific coast province expects foreign investors to scoop up about C$4.5 billion of real estate through March 2019.

To contact the reporter on this story: Natalie Obiko Pearson in Vancouver at npearson7@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net, Steven Frank