Toronto and Montreal are now the favoured destinations of Chinese home buyers—report

BC foreign buyers’ tax motivated the increases, according to a Chinese international property portal

Toronto and Montreal are now the favoured destinations of Chinese home buyers—report
Fresh data from China’s largest international property portal showed that the Toronto and Montreal markets have outstripped Vancouver as the destination of choice among home buyers from the mainland.

The two cities have seen a significant upward spike in property searches by Juwai.com users since January 1, 2017. The property portal attributed this development to British Columbia’s introduction of a 15-per-cent foreign buyers’ tax in the Greater Vancouver area last year.

Despite the levy and a similar tax implemented in Ontario around two months ago, however, foreign buyers still comprised only 1.8 per cent of all residential real estate transactions in Montreal (although the latest data showed that foreign purchases in the city grew by 37 per cent in the first four months of 2017).

This is a much lower proportion (roughly 5 per cent) than that observed in Toronto and in Vancouver prior to the implementation of their respective foreign buyers’ taxes, HuffPost Canada reported

The property portal also predicted that Chinese property investors will spend at least US$1 trillion in purchases around the world over the next 10 years.

“Chinese investors are still underinvested globally,” the Juwai report stated. “Almost as a rule — and certainly in Australia, the U.S., the U.K. and Canada — investors from other nations hold a much greater share of local property and other assets than do those from mainland China.”

 

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