Non-Residents counted for 5% of home sales in the Greater Golden Horseshoe

July 5th, 2017  |  Home

On Tuesday, for the first time, provincial data was made public as to the number of home sales that have been made by non-residents. According to the findings, non-residents made up 4.7% of the over 18,000 home sales made in the Greater Golden Horseshoe between April 24th and May 26th.

What at first blush might seem like the newly implemented 15% non-resident speculation tax doing it’s job, it might actually be the result of the housing market cooling off naturally. John Pasalis, real estate analyst and president of Realosophy, stated that it is unlikely that the recent Ontario tax had anything to do with the newly released numbers, as most of the sales included in those numbers would have been made before the tax was put in place on April 20th.

"What we're seeing right now is just a market that's cooling down organically," said Pasalis. "This is just the real estate market adjusting to a 33 per cent increase in house prices in March and is now kind of falling back to where it should be."

And while 4.7%, a number that Pasalis believes might be closer to 8% in the immediate Toronto area, might not seem like a large number, it still has a substantial impact on the current housing market.

"That's not insignificant,” says Pasalis. “I mean, that's 7,000 families who want to buy a home, who pay taxes, who can't because we have policies that encourage speculation to non-residents and I think that's a problem."