Ottawa, Canada.- Moving and buying property in Canada will be impossible for foreign citizens, including Mexicans, for at least the next two years.
A new law that went into effect on January 1 prohibits non-Canadians from buying residential property within the designated period.
According to the local press, the measure is due to the fact that the high levels of housing demand during the Covid-19 pandemic caused average prices to skyrocket, reaching a national peak of US$605,000 in February 2022.
Competition within the real estate markets has also reached new levels.
However, the measure has been described as a political maneuver and even xenophobic.
“Most of the foreigners who buy real estate are not speculators. They are migrants who buy houses to live,” said Jacky Chan, founder and CEO of Baker West Real Estate, which markets luxury condominiums, and who was born in Hong Kong and has lived in Vancouver for 29 years.
Trudeau and other politicians have said little about the law since it was passed and it has received scant coverage in the local media.
“Non-Canadians got a lot of blame for the housing crisis, and it was a big political issue,” said Brendon Ogmundson, chief economist for the British Columbia Real Estate Association.
“But the pandemic shut down almost the entire segment of foreign buyers, and prices still hit an all-time high. That’s evidence that foreign buyers are not significant market drivers, and this ban won’t affect anything.”
On December 21, six months after the law was passed, the government issued a short set of regulations, including exemptions and compliance.
The ban applies only to “metropolitan census tracts” and “census agglomerations” – basically, cities that meet certain population criteria – and not to vacation homes in “recreational areas.”
The exemptions include buyers with Canadian spouses or partners, refugees, and foreigners buying multi-family homes with more than three units (which could theoretically be rented to Canadians).
As for violators, penalties of up to C$10,000 can be imposed “on any party found guilty of knowingly assisting a non-Canadian in contravention of the ban.”
And offending buyers may be forced to sell the property, “receiving no more than the purchase price paid.”
