Some Americans may actually keep their promise to move to Canada after the results of the U.S. election.
New data from Royal LePage Realty, released on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, shows a spike in real-estate interest from Americans directly following the Nov. 8 election.
That’s in line with data from other companies as well: Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration website crashed and searches for one-way tickets to Canada surged 133 per cent on Cheapflights.com as Donald Trump gained a lead in the election results.
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“The United States was already a top source for immigration into Canada, and now in the period following the recent U.S. election, we are witnessing a material bump in American interest in Canadian real estate,” Royal LePage president and CEO Phil Soper said in a release.
Traffic on the Royal LePage website jumped 329 per cent on Nov. 9, the day after the election.
While that one day may have been an anomaly, interest in prime real estate in the Great White North continued to grow, as traffic to the site increased by almost 41 per cent for the fourth quarter of last year, compared to the same period in 2015.
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Almost 40 per cent of real estate advisors predict American inquiries into Canadian real estate will keep growing under President Donald Trump, according to a survey of 1,226 professionals across the country.
Ontario was the top-researched province by Americans in the fourth quarter of last year, with 41.4 per cent. Saskatchewan the least-researched province, with 0.5 per cent.
Toronto was the top city researched in Ontario, as many likely expected. But on the other side of the country, more Americans were interested in Victoria over the metropolis of Vancouver.
Web traffic in Atlantic Canada was low, as only 17.5 per cent of Americans were looking into real estate in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Meanwhile, 28 per cent of survey respondents said the Americans they talked to were interested in those provinces.
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While there was some web interest in Alberta, a province that was hit hard by a drop in oil prices, realtors working in the province reported that they haven’t sold any houses to Americans since October 2016.
It’s the only province where Americans haven’t bought homes in that time period, the release said.