China buyers back hunting for Vancouver homes

Nine months after the B.C. government raised the foreign-buyer tax on Metro Vancouver homes to 20% of the property’s values, searches by potential buyers in China have surged through the Juwai.com, China’s biggest international real estate portal. But the founder of the Vancouver chapter of the Asian Real Estate Association of America, who recently returned from addressing a Beijing real estate conference, advised home sellers to damper there enthusiasm. “As much as we don’t like to think so, Canada is not as important to China’s buyers as other places, especially the United States,” said Tina Mak, an agent with Coldwell Banker Westburn Realty in Vancouver. Mak suggests that searches through Juwai.com are up for virtually every country as worried Chinese investors attempt to get money out of the country. “Canada was barely mentioned at the Beijing real estate conference,” she noted. However, the number of inquiries on Metro Vancouver real estate between July and September exceeded even the height reached in 2017’s first quarter, the international property website reported in response to an inquiry by Glacier Media. In raw numbers, searches rose from approximately 350 in the second-quarter to nearly 800 in the third quarter. This follows a significant lull over the previous four quarters, where Chinese interest dropped dramatically and focused on other Canadian cities, especially Montréal. Metro Vancouver has this year slipped to being the fifth most searched-for city for Chinese buyers, after Greater Toronto, Montréal, Calgary and Ottawa – whereas in 2016 it was second only to Toronto.