Montreal real estate draws notice from China

Montreal is now attracting more interest than Vancouver on China’s most popular international property website, Juwai.com.

So far this year, there have been more searches for Montreal on the site than for any other Canadian city except Toronto, according to a report released by Juwai.com.

It’s a change that appears to have taken place in recent months — in 2016, Montreal ranked third, after Vancouver, among Canadian cities searched for on the site.

That increase in searches comes as the number of Chinese buyers in Montreal is growing.

“We’re feeling it for sure,” said Angela Langtry, a real estate broker at Century 21 Immo-Plus.

She believes that taxes on foreign buyers in Vancouver and Toronto are behind the growth, she said.

It’s not just people from China, Langtry said.

She’s also seeing a large number of buyers coming from the United States.

“We’re feeling a surge in foreign buyers,” Langtry said. “All eyes are on Montreal. People are hearing about the affordability of it.”

The number of foreign buyers in the region rose 40 per cent between January and April, when compared with the year-earlier period, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

The share of those buyers coming from China is increasing even faster, rising from 10 per cent during the first three months of 2016 to 17 per cent during that period this year, a 70 per cent increase.

“The strongest growth was recorded in the number of buyers from China. This suggested a possible slight shift in demand from Vancouver to Montreal after the introduction of the foreign buyers tax on housing in Vancouver,” according to a report issued by the CMHC this month.

Still, foreign buyers are playing a relatively small role in Montreal’s residential property market — even with those large percentage increases. Foreign buyers were involved in fewer than two per cent of all property transactions in the Montreal region between January and April, making 235 purchases.

The CMHC describes foreign buyers in Montreal as “a small proportion, but one that has been growing continuously for the last few years.”

In Vancouver, foreign buyers made about three to four per cent of all purchases between August 2016, when a 15 per cent foreign buyers tax was introduced in that region, and April 2017, according to CMHC. In the three weeks immediately before the tax went into effect, foreign buyers accounted for 13 per cent of all purchases in the Vancouver area.

Chinese buyers are expected to spend $103.9 billion on international property in 2017, according to Juwai.com, a decrease from 2016, when Chinese buyers spent $130 billion on international real estate.

Canada is the fourth-most-popular destination for Chinese buyers, after the U.S., Hong Kong and Australia, according to the website.