More foreigners snapping up property in Vancouver as tax shock subsides

Vancouver

FOREIGN purchases of Vancouver-area properties nudged off lows in October as international investors, initially unnerved by a tax on foreign home ownership aimed at cooling red-hot prices, returned to Canada's most expensive property market.

Foreign buying may have been artificially low in the months since August when a 15 per cent foreign property transfer tax was introduced, as a large number of transactions were advanced to July to avoid the tax, economists and real estate agents said.