In the weeks and days leading up to Budget 2016, tax experts anticipated some big announcements regarding the Canadian real estate market. Why not? The Liberals campaigned on a promise to loosen the requirements of the Home Buyers’ Plan (HBP) and, more recently, vowed to do something about housing affordability.
Reading between the lines, you can’t blame a would-be homebuyer for hoping for a bit of help. Sadly, it didn’t come in the Liberal’s first budget. At least, not yet.
And those two little words say it all. That’s because Budget 2016 is packed full of promises and nebulous possibilities when it comes to housing.
Half a million spent on foreign buyer data
Perhaps the most blatant measure introduced in Budget 2016 to directly reference Canada’s housing market is the government’s pledge of $500,000 to Statistics Canada to “develop methods for gathering data on purchases of Canadian housing by foreign homebuyers.”
Read full article here: http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/investors-watch-out-how-budget-2016-impacts-real-estate/
