The law that forbids non-residents from acquiring homes in most areas has affected the luxury end of urban markets, experts say
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Canada’s government has extended through the end of 2026 a controversial ban on foreign home buyers that took effect last January after years of debate.
“For years, foreign money has been coming into Canada to buy up residential real estate, increasing housing affordability concerns in cities across the country, and particularly in major urban centres,” Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister and minister of finance, said in a news release yesterday. “Foreign ownership has also fuelled worries about Canadians being priced out of housing markets in cities and towns across the country.”
The Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act forbids non-citizens from buying residential property in most urban areas, though it includes a long list of exceptions. Property in many rural and “recreational” regions is exempt; most students, refugees, permanent residents, spouses of Canadian citizens, and some temporary workers in Canada may still buy homes.
While the government says the ban will help ease Canada’s severe housing crunch, critics in the real estate industry counter that the prohibition is misguided―and ineffective.
“The newly announced two-year extension is completely unnecessary, considering the fact there is no analysis, evidence or data from Statistics Canada, CMHC [Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation] or Finance Canada, to support the government’s intended impact on housing affordability in Canada,” said Janice Myers, CEO of the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), in a statement Monday. “If the government decides to move forward with this baseless extension, CREA urges them to consider recommendations including exempting pre-construction financing, defining and exempting recreational property, including CUSMA [Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement] exemptions, and giving provinces input to tailor to their housing market requirements,” she added.
Don Kottick, the president and CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, agreed.
“Canada’s housing market has been driven almost entirely by the housing needs and demands of locals, as well as by population gains due to in-migration of Canadians from other cities, and through immigration,” he told Mansion Global in an email. “The extension of the foreign buyers ban will continue to have little or no impact on housing affordability and housing prices. This policy has only confused and frustrated those from other countries with crucial skills, talent and capital that Canada has been striving to attract and retain.”
The ban has also chilled luxury home sales in key markets like Toronto, said Maureen O’Neill, manager of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada in Toronto. “People who want to sell houses for more than C$5 million [US$3.92 million] can no longer rely on the buyers they used to count on globally,” she said. “It’s another extra burden on selling a house.”
That burden may soon get even heavier; Toronto’s mayor last week endorsed a 10% tax on foreign home buyers in that city, Canada’s largest. The province of Ontario already imposes its own 25% “non-resident speculation tax” on foreign buyers.
Though Canadian data on non-resident buyers is limited, the CBC last year reported that in British Columbia―one of the nation’s hottest housing markets―only about 1.1% of transactions in 2021 involved a foreign buyer, a drop of 3% in 2017. At the time, Ontario’s government told the CBC it had seen “a downward trend” in foreigners buying property since it began taxing non-resident purchases in 2017.
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The US housing market remains under pressure as high mortgage rates continue to weigh on affordability and demand. Industry leaders say 2026 has been one of the toughest years for home sales, with slower price growth, weaker mortgage activity, and fewer buyers entering the market. However, experts say reduced competition and more price cuts could create opportunities for well-prepared buyers.
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The typically busy spring season for the housing market was a dud, and the summer isn’t looking much brighter.
Housing services companies like Zillow Group and Rocket RKT +3.78% were loud and clear last week on earnings calls: Rocket CEO Varun Krishna called the quarter through June “one of the toughest spring housing markets in years.”
Jeremy Hofmann, Zillow’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call that the company predicted earlier this year that the market for mortgages would be flat. “We actually now think it’s going to be down low-to-mid-single digits,” he said.
The rest of 2026 will remain challenging for mortgage origination volume, says KBW analyst Bose George. The question now is what happens in 2027. “If mortgage rates remain [around] 6.75%, I think that’s going to be challenging even for next year,” he says.
But what’s bad news for mortgage companies could be a positive for bargain hunters. Buyers can expect prices to grow more slowly—or mildly decline—with less competition as long as mortgage rates remain unpredictable.
Mortgage rates at the beginning of the year were solidly below year-ago levels, notes Zillow senior economist Kara Ng. But they surpassed last year’s levels recently, she adds, referencing Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of 30-year fixed mortgage rates. Last week’s reading, at 6.69%, was higher than year-ago levels for the first time in 2026.
“From the affordability point of view, it’s going to get more challenging in the second half of the year,” she says. “And when affordability gets more challenging, that impacts sales and home price appreciation.”
Mortgage application data tracked by the Mortgage Bankers Association has cooled since the beginning of the year. The trade group expects that the number of mortgage originations in the remaining two quarters will lag behind last year’s levels, after exceeding 2025 levels in the first half.
Rocket’s early-stage data—which the company told Barron’s it derives from its brokerage Redfin, demand for its mortgage products, and signs in its servicing portfolio that a homeowner is preparing to refinance or move—“leads us to expect the third quarter mortgage market to be smaller than the second,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Brown, said on the company’s call. He added that such an occurrence is “something the industry has not seen since 2022.”
Prices will be about flat nationally, Ng says. Zillow’s most recent forecast, which shows how values are expected to change in the year ending June 2027, show them dropping in roughly half of the 100 largest U.S. metros for which data is available.
Buyers aren’t rushing in at a time when mortgage costs are rising and unpredictable. But those with the right combination of patience and cash could stand to benefit. “If you are financially qualified to buy a starter home, you are facing less competition and you’re more likely to get a price cut,” Ng says.
