4 January 2018

“Different researches by TREB, the provincial government and Statistics Canada showed that foreign home buyers turned out to be not the main driver of sales in the GTA. Nevertheless, the Ontario Fair Housing Plan, including a foreign buyer tax, had a strong psychological influence on the real estate market.”

As you know, Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan was presented in April. It includes a 15% tax for non-resident home buyers, expanded rent controls and a number of other measures aimed at cooling what was then a red-hot housing market in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario.

As a result, prices for detached houses showed a sharp decrease in the GTA – they were down by 2.5% from the previous year to $989,870. Meanwhile, condo prices didn’t face the same impact and rose by 14.4% in December to $503,968.