The B.C. government unveiled a foreign-buyer’s tax last summer aimed at tamping down Vancouver’s runaway real estate market and making homes more affordable.
Eight months later, has home affordability actually improved?
Vancouver-area sales, listings and prices all dropped after the measure – a 15-per-cent property transfer tax on foreign national home buyers – went into effect Aug. 2.
But by then, the market was already cooling, Royal Bank of Canada senior economist Robert Hogue said last week in a report.
“The impact of the tax in Metro Vancouver was more evident on housing prices and purchases by foreign nationals than on home resale activity, which had been slowing for several months before the tax was even announced,” he wrote.
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