For the first time, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is offering a snapshot into the percentage of Greater Victoria properties belonging to or partly belonging to people who don’t live or work in Canada.
The data has been released in a housing market insight report detailing non-resident ownership and participation in B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia.
CMHC finds 5.2 per cent of Greater Victoria homes have at least one person on the title who is considered a non-resident. The statistic falls behind the provincial average of 6.3% -- while Metro Vancouver is highest at 7.6%.
“As a group, non-resident owners tend to buy newer properties and they tend to have higher assessment values,” says CMHC analyst Eric Bond. “Both of those trends are interesting in the context of local housing markets both in Victoria and in Vancouver.”
A property is considered non-resident ownership when the majority or all of its owners are non-residents.
In that case, Greater Victoria’s 5.2 per cent average breaks down to 2.9 per cent of households being non-residents only, while 2.3 per cent are a mix of residents and non-residents.
The report also finds close to half of non-resident owned single-detached homes in Victoria’s Census Metropolitan Area are in Saanich (35.4%) and Victoria (13.9%).
The data doesn’t include information on how properties are being used or whether they’re occupied.
And it’s worth noting, non-residents include Canadians living abroad.
