Around 3.5 per cent of Vancouver condo owners are not resident in Canada, according to a comprehensive Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation survey, taken from responses gathered in fall 2015.
That compares with 2.3 per cent overseas owners in the fall 2014 survey.
However, this figure rises considerably when it comes to newer condo buildings. When the results were broken down by age of the building in which respondents own a unit, the proportion of offshore owners in post-2010 buildings rose to six per cent – compared with just 1.4 per cent of respondents who own units in buildings completed before 1990.
foreign owners of Vancouver condos 1
foreign owners of Vancouver condos 2
The report did not further break down the Vancouver results by area or neighbourhood.
However, it did also examine overseas ownership of condos other census metropolitan areas (CMAs) across the country. Toronto CMA yielded extremely similar results to Vancouver.
In other Canadian CMAs, offshore ownership was notably lower than in the two prime markets, ranging from 0.1 per cent in Hamilton to 2.7 per cent in Winnipeg.
In BC, Kelowna's overseas condo ownership was reported as 0.2 per cent, and in Victoria it was one per cent.
In its introduction, the survey report said, “In recent years, the topic of foreign ownership has gained in importance as evidenced by the level of interest generated in the media. The general perception is that foreign buyers are key players whose actions could have significant implications for Canadian housing markets. Despite a range of statistics suggested by various studies on the size of foreign ownership, available factual information remains scarce.”
Bob Dugan, the CMHC’s chief economist, added, “This report represents another piece in the puzzle of foreign investment in Canada. It remains a top priority for CMHC to continue to get more information on foreign investment in Canada’s housing market.”
Urbanation, a Vancouver and Toronto condo and rental market research group, said in a blog review of the CMHC survey that there were still holes in the data, as it doesn’t cover who is currently buying presale units.
It said, “It's important to note that The Condominium Owners Survey was conducted for the third time and the results have remained pretty consistent, which indicates the survey quality is good.
“The latest CMHC survey … unfortunately sheds very little light on investors of new condos, who have been driving market activity over the past several years. In fact, when combined with other related data, and performing some residual calculations, the survey results actually show a very large gap in information on condo investors."
It added, “In fact, the results showed only 4.1 per cent of investors surveyed had a unit that was under construction or in presale at the time of the survey. In other words, those looking for information as to who's buying new condos won't find the answers in this survey.”
