Foreign nationals account for 5% of Metro Vancouver home sales, according to recent B.C. data

July 7, 2016

Joanne Lee-Young | Vancouver Sun

B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong says province-wide about three per cent of residential home transactions were by foreign nationals.

The information is based on three weeks of data, from June 10 to 29, since Victoria started requiring people who purchase residential property in B.C. to disclose their citizenship or country of residence if they are not a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. De Jong estimates sales during this time, just over 10,000, represent about 10 per cent of projected total home sales for 2016.

De Jong says 258 out of 10,148 transactions during this period were from buyers from mainland China, and 50 per cent of all transactions were in Lower Mainland. A total of 77 per cent of transactions by foreign nationals were in Lower Mainland.

 The move to collect the data followed public outcry that foreign ownership is contributing to skyrocketing prices in Metro Vancouver’s skyrocketing real estate market, but that its exact impact isn’t officially quantified.

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