“For the first time in almost two decades, British Columbia will require real estate purchasers to disclose citizenship details starting next month, as Metro Vancouver’s red-hot housing market fuels concerns about foreign investment.
The new requirements, aimed at answering whether foreign ownership is driving up housing prices, go beyond the data that are supposed to be collected for Canada’s anti-money-laundering agency whenever someone is involved in a real estate transaction. Records show there is significant non-compliance among Vancouver-area real estate firms, which are required to collect the information for the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FinTRAC).
B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong said he is confident provincial auditors will be more successful. “The objective here is to get beyond the theory, get beyond the conjecture and the speculation and actually have hard data,” he told reporters on Tuesday.”
Full article here: http://www.bnn.ca/News/2016/5/11/British-Columbia-unveils-new-rules-to-limit-real-estate-shadow-flipping.aspx
