In August 2016, anyone from a country other than Canada who was closing on a house in Vancouver (or elsewhere in British Columbia) was slapped with significant sticker shock when the government unveiled a 15-percent tax on real estate sales to foreign buyers. Like foreign investors in any area, many of those sales were for high-end properties, and according to Elton Ash, the regional director of Re/Max of Western Canada — who’s based in Vancouver — “the effect was that the market died immediately. It just fell off the ends of the earth. We went from a multiple-offer situation to zero within a weekend.” Now, Ontario has announced a similar measure, which will affect Toronto, a city said to have absorbed some of the Vancouver overflow since August (and the resulting skyrocketing prices, too). Will Toronto see similar effects to Vancouver’s — and what does this mean for real estate agents in the United States, where price growth is also frustrating buyers? Vancouver’s tax…
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