By Shirin Saleh, Managing Broker | 88West Realty
When I meet with developers, investors, and homeowners across Greater Vancouver, a single question keeps rising above the noise: Has Canada’s “foreign buyer ban” truly helped make homes more affordable? Or just slowed down the people building them?
In 2023, Canada introduced the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non‑Canadians Act, effectively banning most foreign buyers from purchasing homes. The policy arrived in the heat of an affordability crisis. When headlines screamed about bidding wars, record prices, and fears that offshore money was pushing Canadians out of their own markets.
It was a politically easy message: protect Canadian homes for Canadians. But two years later, the results tell a more complicated story.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), foreign ownership in major Canadian cities was already low before the ban, 3% of total housing stock. Yet housing affordability continued to deteriorate after the ban took effect. Prices dipped briefly in 2024, but construction starts plunged, and new projects stalled as developers lost investor confidence and early‑stage financing.
The B.C. Real Estate Association’s (BCREA) latest Market Intelligence Report shows unsold new homes at a 30‑year high, largely in the multi‑family sector. Developers report that weaker pre‑sales have made financing nearly impossible.
Meanwhile, CMHC warns that Canada needs 3.5 million additional homes by 2030 to restore affordability. But completing those homes takes capital, the very fuel that policy has shut off. The result? An affordability policy that, ironically, threatens affordability itself.
Industry leaders are noticing. In early 2026, a group of real‑estate developers signed an open letter urging the federal government to reconsider the foreign buyer ban, arguing that it’s “symbolic more than structural.” Without investor confidence, hundreds of planned projects risk delay or cancellation. This is an outcome that impacts not just housing supply, but GDP, jobs, and trade.
Canada isn’t alone in facing this housing dilemma, but other countries have taken more targeted approaches:
Real estate and construction account for nearly 14% of Canada’s GDP (Statistics Canada, 2025). Even a modest 5% slowdown in new development ripples across trades, labor, materials, and municipal tax bases.
Developers are clear: without predictable rules and stable investors, cranes stop moving. And when cranes stop, so do some starts; intensifying the shortage and pushing prices even higher for the very Canadians the policy aims to protect.
Extending the ban through 2027 might score quick political points, but the long game demands different thinking. Instead of banning capital, we could direct it into purpose‑built rentals, affordable housing partnerships, and infrastructure that expands supply, not just competition.
Foreign capital can fund job creation, housing diversity, and regional growth when guided responsibly.
We can’t fix affordability by freezing out the very mechanisms that create supply. Homes become attainable when we build consistently through economic cycles, not in sporadic bursts between policy shifts. It’s time to move from ban to build.
