New permanent residents could be driving $50B in home sales

The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.

On paper, there are no foreign property buyers in Canada in 2026, and there will not be — at least until the foreign buyer ban is lifted, which may happen as early as January 2027.

But that statement is misleading. Even with the ban in place, Canada still permits tens of thousands of foreigners to buy Canadian homes every year. In my line of work, we see it every day with the clients we work with.

New permanent residents could be buying CA$50 billion of residential real estate per year

The foreign buyer ban applies to foreign nationals, with a major exception: those who are permanent residents (PR) in Canada. A citizen of China or any other country who becomes a Canadian PR is, for property-buying purposes, no longer foreign. They can buy a home like anyone else. After all, they need a place to live.

They are foreign in the sense that they are not Canadian citizens, but they have permission to live in Canada and purchase a home. Long-term work-permit holders can also buy, but their numbers are more limited.

I thought it would be illuminating to estimate investment in Canadian residential real estate by foreign buyers. My first step was to check Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data on new permanent residents. Then I made some educated guesses about how many are purchasing homes. (The government doesn’t record buyers by nationality.)

The top sources of new permanent residents might surprise you

The top five source countries together contributed a total of 184,455 new permanent residents to Canada in 2025. Under the three scenarios shown in the table below, their combined spending on residential real estate ranges from CA$31.2 billion to CA$50 billion.

The table models how much new permanent residents to Canada from the top five source countries in 2025 could spend on homes, depending on what share of them buy. I assume each buyer purchases at the estimated national average price of CA$677,000, per CREA data for 2025.

In reality, the propensity to purchase, price points and markets of choice — and thus actual home prices — likely differ enormously among these nationalities. So here I’m presenting scenarios, but we don’t know how closely they conform to reality. Perhaps only five per cent, or even one per cent, actually purchase in the first year after becoming PRs. We don’t have the data.

The key fact is that Canada is an immigrant nation, and buyers who hold permanent residency inevitably play a role in the housing market.

China is Canada’s fourth-largest source of new residents

In 2025, 21,115 Chinese nationals became Canadian permanent residents. They made up 5.4 per cent of all new PRs that year. In the first quarter of 2026, China’s share rose to 5.6 per cent. Combine 2025 and Q1 2026 and you get 25,805 new Chinese permanent residents out of 476,835 total.

That ranks China fourth, behind India, the Philippines and Cameroon, and just ahead of Nigeria. (Cameroon’s recent jump is a result of the effort to boost Francophone immigration, rather than a new investment trend.)

Given their noted preference for real assets, it stands to reason that if Chinese nationals are the fourth-largest group becoming eligible to buy, they are plausibly at least the fourth-most-active actual buyers among new PRs. This group skews wealthier as far as new PRs go, and Chinese buyers have historically over-indexed toward property ownership.

Before 2023, foreign buyers like those from China didn’t need permanent residency to buy in Canada, and they were more active, especially in the two markets everyone watched: Vancouver and Toronto.

The data crunchers always believed the actual role of offshore foreign buyers was smaller than the headlines suggested. Certainly, the rapid price gains during the pandemic — when new foreign arrivals plummeted and offshore foreign buyers were banned — proved that domestic factors drove the affordability crisis.

Statistics Canada reported that in 2020, non-residents of any nationality owned 2.2 per cent of residential properties in Ontario, 2.9 per cent in New Brunswick, 3.1 per cent in British Columbia and 3.6 per cent in Nova Scotia. Among metro areas, Vancouver had the highest non-resident ownership rate, at 4.2 per cent.

That sort of offshore foreign home buying has disappeared in Canada in recent years. What has not disappeared is purchasing by Chinese and other foreign permanent resident groups. The buying still happens. It’s just that now it takes place after the buyer has obtained permanent residency.

Having enough doctors: one benefit of immigration

Without the people these numbers stand in for, Canada would struggle economically and socially. Immigrants make up more than a third of the country’s professional, scientific and technical services employees.

About two out of every five pharmacists, dentists and physicians in Canada are also immigrants. It’s difficult to imagine Canada being better off without all these professionals.

In sum, there’s no official number for investment in Canadian residential real estate by foreigners who are new permanent residents. Yet the evidence suggests it remains substantial and could range as high as CA$50 billion per year.

Like all other Canadians, new permanent residents want to have a home, feel like they belong and make a contribution. The real estate industry should be proud to help them get established in their new home of Canada, which is one of the world’s best places to live.

The post New permanent residents could be driving $50B in home sales appeared first on REM.