>

They’ll just pay a citizen to do it for them.
"As of 1 January, the ban prohibits people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents from buying residential properties, and imposes a C$10,000 fine on those who breach it."
I wonder if it's a one-time fee cause that's not as bad as it sounds? >

What about foreign citizens just forming a Canadian corporation that buys/sells real estate? Seems like an easy work around. >

It’s actually easier than that. Canadian real estate agents have people in Canada that will sign on as the “buyer” for these foreign investors. >

Source? That's the first I've heard of this and it sounds like blatant fraud to me >

I see it all the time in California:


I got scammed on a real estate deal by two young Chinese people who made peanuts (on paper) but were somehow buying millions in real estate. I didn't figure out the scam until they'd cost me about $20,000.


I once lived in a rental in California that was owned by someone living in Taiwan who'd never even seen the place. They were collecting real estate the way that some people collect baseball cards.


One time I was looking at open houses in CA, and kept seeing the same little old Chinese lady in a minivan making cash offers at half the houses we looked at that day. It's like she was making offers on everything. Obvious Straw Buyer. >

Second the question of how they cost you anything at all. Let alone 20k. They stole money from your account? You should go after them if they did that. >

I knew someone would ask :)
How I got scammed by a Chinese straw buyer:
You can generally buy homes for about 3% less in the winter, and they cost about 3% more in the summer. Due to this, I always sell in the summer and buy in the winter. I've bought and sold a ton of houses.
So, one summer, I put a house up for sale. I get a number of offers, and I selected one from a buyer who lived out of state. They were Chinese. They said that they were "really excited to live in the house and raise their family."
So, from the get go, they presented it as if they intended to live in the house I was selling them.
After I accepted their offer, they spent FIVE FUCKING MONTHS filibustering and nickel and diming me. Just really ridiculous shit; one of their complaints was that "there wasn't enough parking on the street."
AS IF I CONTROL HOW MUCH PARKING ON THE STREET THERE IS
After a few months of this nonsense, it was abundantly clear what the scam was:


they made dozens, maybe even hundreds of offers on homes


then they dragged their feet and made a dozen excuse for why they couldn't close the deal


at the same time, they kept trying to negotiate the price down AFTER THEY'D AGREED TO A PRICE IN WRITING


Just incredibly scammy and predatory behavior. In hindsight, I should have told them to fuck off the first time they pulled these stunts. But they were convincing actors, and at first they had me believing that their excuses were legitimate.
Things went NUCLEAR when my real estate did some probing, and learned that they were doing this to numerous people. It wasn't just me. They were just making dozens or hundreds of offers, and then trying to break the back of the people selling the homes, so they could get the property for cheap.
Really slimy "buyers." 
I put "buyers" in quotes, because based on the number of people that they were screwing over, they were certainly a "conduit" for money coming from somewhere else. Your average 25yo doesn't have millions to invest in real estate all up and down the west coast.
When all the dust settled, I wound up stuck with a home that was unoccupied for about six months. So I had to deal with paying the mortgage AND paying the rent at my new home, which was no fun. I also had to burn up 100% of my vacation from my day job that year, flying out of state to do gardening and upkeep on the vacant home. On top of that, when I relisted the house, to find a new buyer, the first question out of everyone's mouth was "why has this home been so hard to sell?" And, naturally, I couldn't tell the truth because I might get myself sued. >

This sounds really strange. Wasn't there an expiry clause on the mutual agreement contract? If they failed to make good faith effort to move toward closing, re-list the house and go under contract with another buyer. >


Wasn't there an expiry clause on the mutual agreement contract?

Yep. But they were good actors and exploited my good nature to convince me that they were "struggling."
Things didn't go nuclear until my real estate agent pulled the curtain back and found that they were running this scam on multiple people, all at the same time. They're probably still doing it to this day. >

Excuse me for saying so but not having an expiry clause is simply foolish regardless of how well-intentioned you think the buyers were. I'd put that on you.
I've never bought a house and went under contract where the contract did not have an expiration clause. That's just asking for legal exploitation.
​
I would never work with that real estate agent again. >

This is a prime example of the government doing something that is popular but has no significant impact to improve anyone’s situation just to get political brownie points. Foreign home buyers only control 2-6% of the housing market.
Meanwhile, up to 92% of new homes in Canada are being purchased by investors. The government is doing literally nothing to stop this, which is clearly the cause of the housing price crisis right now. These investors, with their deep pockets, are outbidding Canadians, driving up prices across the entire country. >

Reddit (as well as Canadians and Americans) have been scapegoating Chinese people for years for driving up home prices, as some kind of boogeyman buying up all the housing in their country, when the reality is that they buy a tiny portion. 
You can probably figure out why they're targeting Chinese people while ignoring all the other races of people buying homes. >

China’s become what used to be the middle east what used to be russia etc etc. Its this generation of americas “enemy”. First the movie bad guys were germans, then russians, then Arab men, now its gonna be chinese buisness men >

Here in Toronto we have already moved on to blame Indians (or anybody resembling Indians) using explicitly racist stereotypes as we've done before to Middle Easterners and then Chinese. >

Huh, i didnt see that when i lived there but then again i wasnt in toronto proper and much closer to the brampton area. Or is this a more recent development? >

This is a very new trend that only started in 2021 I believe, after Chinese immigration and especially international students to Canada plummeted.
Brampton has always been on the receiving end of borderline prejudiced stuff but the rhetoric turned bad in 2022.
It's kinda black comedic because I clearly remember pre-pandemic about people online praising Indian immigrants to be "assimilating more" than the Chinese lol. >

Fuck ok no wonder i didn’t notice, I havent lived there in several years. Thats really depressing to hear :-( >

If it's a good investment for a rich foreigner, isn't it also a good investment for a rich Canadian?  Is there a big difference in the price foreigner investors are willing to pay for Canadian real estate versus what Canadian investors are willing to pay?  I don't really grasp why this would be expected to have a big impact on prices. >


If it's a good investment for a rich foreigner, isn't it also a good investment f

It's not necessarily a good investment, real estate is a safe investment for foreign investors to get money out the country.  Real estate holdings are pretty easy to understand, investing in the stock market is more challenging. >

I know an agent in Vancouver. He just sells blueprints as this point because buyers are scrambling for anything. 
Real estate is a perfect place to park your money. Hot market means the value only goes up. Plus the Canadian government isn’t going to adverse possess real estate on behalf of a foreign government. You can buy a few 10M condos and the Party has to pound sand. >

It's not a ban - it just costs rich foreigners an extra C$10,000, which is absolutely nothing to a rich foreigner buying property abroad. What a joke. >

It costs then $10k.  It costs anybody else involved $10k.  They can be forced to sell it.  They are not allowed to sell it for more than they paid. 
You left out a few details. >

The fact that it doesn't cover MDUs (multi-dwelling units) or property management consortiums is a huge flaw tho. It's a step in the right direction, but just a step. >

It's probably not going to do much. The real issue is corporations  buying up properties,  money being transferred to canadians to buy property, and those owning more than 2 homes. >

You can try homeownership ban for foreigners and corporations, you can try price control. You can try whatever you want but unless you can actually building more homes, as in build up in metro areas near cities where housing shortage is, you won’t ever solve housing costs. >

Where's the money in that?
Instead, just keep jacking-up rents and forcing the current market to appreciate.  Win-win.  /s >

That’s NIMBYism for ya. We need to heavily upzone areas because uncontrolled suburban sprawl clearly isn’t working. >

The governments need to promote expansion of cities outside of major centers, so that one doesn't need nor want to commute.  Affordable housing and real fulltime jobs, like manufacturing.
Otherwise the construction is just building endless bedroom cities (we are way past bedroom communities), and ever expanding highways for commuters. >

Manufacturing, specifically low-level manufacturing aren’t ever coming to any developed country, that’s the reality. Corporations don’t to pay high wage and consumers don’t want to overpay for expensive things that used to cheap. >

Oh, look!  The horses have all escaped the barn a long time ago.  Guess we better shut the doors for a while. >

Wondering when the U.S. will have the balls to do something similar. >

Is this a major problem here? >

No it actually isn’t. It’s just the knee jerk populist reaction to blame foreigners for our domestic problems.
Foreign buyers only own 2-6% of homes in Canada.
The actual cause of our problems is the same as in the US, that is up to 92% of new homes are being purchased by investment companies.
OP is just falling for the populist bait that Trudeau is tossing his way. >

Any info on where these investment companies are based out of? Couldn't find it in the article(s) >

-Goldman Sachs-Backed Rental Fund Buys Entire Community Of 87 Single-Family Homes In Central Florida
-JPMorgan is about to spend $1 billion on hundreds of rental homes across the US on the way to becoming a megalandlord
-Wall Street is buying up family homes. The rent checks are too juicy to ignore
Goldman Sachs has also been lobbying legislation for a while now to be able to rezone a residential property for commercial use so that when they buy up a neighborhood, one of the properties can be used as that neighborhood's on-site management office. >

The comment above mentioned that it's happening in Canada the same as the US. I'm just highlighting how it's happening in the US. >

I'm a derp and wasn't keeping my threads straight. You're totally right. >

hahaha only 10k?... Hilarious! >

Montana wants to pass a 10-year Naturalization law, because of shit like this that's nearly priced out locals. >

Sounds like there's a whole new industry about to be born: A Canadian company that buys residential properties on behalf of foreigners and promises to pay them the full value of the house when ordered to sell it. >

We’ll promise but I say we blow their money on hockey sticks and new skidoos >

Part of the problem is geography.  Like a majority of the entire country lives in the greater Toronto area. The city has reached the limits of how much it can sprawl out without creating a new metro area. But Canada's tough geography makes putting down a new city hard. Canada needs its population to be centralized geographically to compete with other economies... but that also means home stuff is stupid expensive when 90% of the country is empty space. >

Canada is generally a very cold country but its interior (the areas in the middle) and north are literally artic/tundra, boreal forest.
Edit:
Vancouver is Canada's warmest city with an average temp of like 50 F >

The timing of this makes it really easy to blame regulation for depressed housing prices. It’s coming about four years too late. I could see this being used against regulating home purchases in the future “last time we regulated home buying it crashed the housing market!” >

It's supposed to help bring prices down because of foreign investment driving up prices >

Do you see how that could be used as evidence to not regulate housing though? >

I'm sure there's a lot of loopholes they can go through anyway. Which really needs to stop. >

The loophole is you just pay a less than 1% ($10,000) fine on your $+1mil home purchase. >

Its not a ban if theres a fine. >

Hahahahahahaha eheh, whooah . Pfft, hahahahahahah! >

So this really doesn’t stop groups from buying homes and marking them up. Even if they were foreign buyers, they have enough money to eat the cost of the fine and then leave the house up for sale on the market for the 2 years at a price that they set? >

How about REITs?  No?  Wonder why. >

Lol 10K? They’re laughing in our faces and just buying more homes. That won’t stop them 🤦🏼‍♀️ >

What about Canadian citizens who live oversea??? I have a few acquaintances who had lived in US for over 40-50 years and kept buying up places in Vancouver. (I met them when they were in town for a 3-month stay when COVID was rapid in California and they said they had no intend to live in Vancouver long term. They own multiple properties here, even though they moved to California since they were young adults. They are dual citizens and their spouses are Americans.) 
This policy certainly doesn’t stop them. >

“Home sales slump for the last 2 years”
-2025 >

US Congress should stop JP Morgan from buying $! billion dollars in residential rental property, we have a housing shortage and they are predatory >

I wish the U.S. would ban foreign homebuyers.  So many people living out of the U.S. but buying up the homes here as investment property, causing home prices to rise and become unaffordable for people who live here. >

Canada adds a $10,000 one time tax fee on non-Canadians purchasing Canadian homes* >

Hey your 4.3 million dollar house now costs $4,310,000. That doesn't put it out of budget for you, does it?