Non-residents own more than 7% of condo units in Toronto
By Newinhomes on Mar 13, 2019
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released its latest Housing Market Insight report, highlighting some new data gathered on non-resident homeownership in British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia.
CMHC considers non-residents anyone with their primary dwelling located outside of Canada. There are two ways of assessing non-residents: with residency ownership and residency participation. Residency ownership implies that the majority of the owners of a property are non-residents, while residency participation means that at least one of the property owners is a non-resident.
In Ontario, non-resident participation has a share of just 3.3%. This is especially low considering BC and Nova Scotia each have a 6.2% share. Non-resident participation is most prevalent in the condo market. Just over 6% of the condo units in Ontario have at least one non-resident owner. When looking at only Toronto Census Metropolitan Area condos, the share of non-resident participation jumps to 7.6%.
Non-resident participation in Toronto overall is at 3.8%, but when looking at residential properties constructed from 2016 to 2017, the share is just over 6%. Focusing in on detached homes built between 2011 and 2017, nearly 26% have at least one non-resident owner in Toronto. The share is much greater in Vancouver with almost 40% non-resident participation in the detached home market.
"Condominium apartments had the highest prevalence of non-resident ownership, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto. In general, non-resident ownership is more frequent in newer and higher value residential properties,” says Aled ab Iorwerth, Deputy Chief Economist, CMHC. “The CHSP data allows us to better understand the role of non-residents as a component of demand in Canadian housing markets, a topic that is of public interest in terms of the source of funds and the investment behaviour associated with such properties."
With regards to median assessed value, a non-resident owned condo in Toronto is valued $37,000 higher than the median valued resident owned condo. It’s the opposite in Ontario’s detached home market where the median value of a non-resident owned home is $35,000 lower than the median resident owned detached home. That said, the median values for non-resident owned detached homes in Toronto and Ottawa are higher than the resident owned counterparts.
The compared median values between non-residents and residents in Vancouver is much more dramatic. The median value of a condo owned by a non-resident is $96,000 higher than the median value of a condo owned by a resident. For detached homes, the median value among non-residents in BC is a whopping $236,000 higher than the median value for resident owners!
It will be interesting to see how this data influences future policy. It could guide future changes to the non-resident buyer taxes, and maybe even influence changes in vacant home taxes.
