Ontario’s new foreign buyer’s tax has not impacted Hamilton’s hot housing market, according to the president of the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington.
Lou Piriano is responding to newly released figures that show nearly five per cent of home purchases in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region were made by non-residents since the Liberal government announced a foreign buyer’s tax in April.
“I’m not sure where they get their numbers, I’m not sure they’ve explained it in any detail. But speaking with one of the major banks as I do constantly, their estimate is that in Toronto it might be three per cent. We don’t see anything near that here,” said Piriano.
“I haven’t run into a single realtor who has said to me that they lost a client or people have changed their mind. I’m sure there are some but it’s just not an issue.”
The 15 per cent tax is imposed on buyers stretching from the Niagara Region to Peterborough who are not citizens, permanent residents or Canadian corporations.
“I think really, this is sort of a mental assault in order to try to slow the market down. This is really more phycological legislation than it is anything practical.”
The provincial government says data collected from April 24 to May 26 show nearly 18,300 residential and agricultural properties were bought or acquired in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region.
Of those transactions, about 4.7 per cent of the properties were bought or acquired by people who aren’t citizens or permanent residents and by foreign corporations.
The province says it will update its numbers again in the fall.
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