Canada's Foreign Buyer Ban Ends January 1, 2027: What Changes, and the Taxes That Stay

Canada's Foreign Buyer Ban Ends January 1, 2027: What Changes, and the Taxes That Stay

Short answer: The federal prohibition on non-Canadians buying residential property is scheduled to cease on January 1, 2027. From that date, federal law no longer stops a non-Canadian from buying a house or a condo in a Canadian city. The purchase taxes are separate provincial and municipal law, and none of them has an expiry date attached to the federal one. A foreign buyer closing in Toronto in 2027 still pays Ontario's 25 percent non-resident speculation tax plus Toronto's 10 percent municipal version, a combined 35 percent of the price, before ordinary land transfer tax. A foreign buyer in the specified regions of British Columbia still pays a 20 percent additional property transfer tax. A buyer who is not a Nova Scotia resident still pays that province's 10 percent deed transfer tax. The ban was the lock on the door. The taxes are the price of walking through it, and the price survives the lock.

This guide is education only, not legal or tax advice. Every regime below turns on the buyer's status, the property's location and unit count, and the dates on the agreement and the registration. A file that touches any of these taxes belongs in front of a real estate lawyer in the province of purchase before an offer is signed, not after.

Four instruments get called one ban

Most of the confusion in this area comes from four different instruments being discussed as if they were one rule. They are made by three levels of government, they fire at different moments, and only one of them is ending.

Instrument	Government	What it does	Status
Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act	Federal	Bars most non-Canadians from buying residential property of three units or fewer in census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations	In force since January 1, 2023; scheduled to cease January 1, 2027
Non-resident speculation taxes and additional transfer taxes	Ontario, City of Toronto, British Columbia, Nova Scotia	Charge a percentage of the price at closing when a foreign entity or a non-resident buys	Live, with no expiry tied to the federal Act
Annual vacancy and speculation taxes	British Columbia, Vancouver, Toronto, others	Charge a percentage of assessed value each year on homes that sit vacant or underused, with annual declarations	Live. Our guides to the BC speculation and vacancy tax and the underused housing tax cover this layer
Ordinary land transfer tax	Provinces, plus Toronto	The standard transfer tax every buyer pays in the provinces that levy one	Permanent. See our land transfer tax guide

Read the rest of this guide with that table in mind. A headline that says the foreign buyer ban is ending is describing the first row only. Rows two to four decide what a 2027 purchase actually costs.

The ban itself: dates and history

Parliament passed the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act on June 23, 2022. It came into force on January 1, 2023, as a two-year measure that was set to expire on January 1, 2025.

On February 4, 2024, the Department of Finance Canada announced a two-year extension. In the department's words, the ban, then set to expire on January 1, 2025, would be extended to January 1, 2027, and foreign commercial enterprises and people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents would continue to be prohibited from purchasing residential property in Canada. That extension is the operative date today.

Two things follow from the history. First, January 1, 2027 is a scheduled expiry written into an amended law, not a rumour. Second, the February 2024 extension is the precedent for what an extension looks like: a federal announcement, followed by legislation. In the federal announcements and the coverage checked for this guide in October 2026, no further extension had been announced. Buyers planning around the date should plan on the law as it stands, and should treat any late extension announcement as a live possibility rather than a surprise, because it has happened once already.

Who counts as a non-Canadian under the Act

The Act's definition is built on citizenship and immigration status, not on where a person lives or pays tax. A non-Canadian is:

• An individual who is not a Canadian citizen, not a permanent resident of Canada, and not a person registered as an Indian under the Indian Act.
• A corporation or entity incorporated or formed outside Canada.
• A corporation or entity formed under Canadian or provincial law whose shares are not listed on a Canadian stock exchange and that is controlled by non-Canadians. Since the March 27, 2023 regulatory amendments, control for this purpose is measured at a 10 percent threshold of equity value or voting rights held by non-Canadians, directly or indirectly, up from 3 percent in the original regulations.

The first bullet produces the result that surprises people most often. A Canadian citizen who has lived in London or Hong Kong for twenty years is not a non-Canadian under this Act, was never banned, and does not pay the provincial foreign buyer taxes either, because those taxes use the same citizenship and permanent residence test. A permanent resident who arrived last year is equally outside the definition. The regimes in this guide target legal status, not foreignness in the everyday sense, and not tax residency, with one provincial exception covered in the Nova Scotia section below.

What property the ban covers, and what it never covered

The prohibition applies to residential property located in a census metropolitan area (CMA) or a census agglomeration (CA), the Statistics Canada urban areas built around a population core of at least 10,000 people. Inside those areas, the covered property is, in general terms:

• Land with a detached house or a similar building containing three or fewer dwelling units.
• A semi-detached house, a rowhouse unit, or a residential condominium unit, with the related land.
• Other prescribed property of the same small-scale residential kind.

Four categories sit outside the prohibition, and they matter for anyone structuring a purchase today rather than waiting for 2027:

1. Buildings with four or more dwelling units. A non-Canadian can buy a fourplex, a small apartment building, or a large rental tower in Toronto today, subject to the other laws in this guide. The federal definition stops at three units.
2. Vacant land. The original regulations caught vacant land zoned for residential or mixed use inside a CMA or CA. CMHC announced on March 27, 2023 that this provision was repealed, so the prohibition does not apply to vacant land, which can be purchased and used for any purpose, including residential development.
3. Property outside a CMA or CA. A cottage, a rural house, or a home in a small community outside the census urban areas was never covered, whatever the buyer's status. This is a map test, not a distance test, and boundary properties need an address-level check against the Statistics Canada definitions.
4. Purchases for development, and commercial property. The amendments added an exception for non-Canadians purchasing residential property for the purpose of development, and commercial and industrial property were never residential property under the Act.

The provincial taxes use their own property definitions, which are wider in places. Ontario's tax reaches land with up to six single-family residences. Nova Scotia's reaches residential property of three or fewer units on a different trigger, residency in the province. A purchase can be outside the federal ban and squarely inside a provincial tax at the same time. The fourplex is the cleanest example: no federal prohibition, and no Ontario speculation tax either once a building passes six single-family residences, but a three-unit building in Ontario escapes the ban only by geography or buyer status while remaining fully taxable if a foreign entity buys it.

Who can already buy today: the exemption list

The ban has never been absolute. The Act and its regulations exempt defined classes of buyers, and a buyer who fits one of them does not need 2027 at all. The main routes, with their conditions, are:

• Work permit holders. A temporary resident who holds a work permit, or is authorized to work in Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, may buy if they have 183 days or more of validity remaining on the permit or authorization on the date of purchase, and they have not purchased more than one residential property. The March 2023 amendments repealed the earlier tax-filing and work-experience conditions, so the two conditions above are the current test.
• International students. A temporary resident enrolled in a program of authorized study at a designated learning institution may buy if they filed every required income tax return for each of the five taxation years before the purchase year, were physically present in Canada for at least 244 days in each of the five calendar years before the purchase year, pay no more than $500,000 for the property, and have not purchased more than one residential property. In practice this five-year record means the route serves students near the end of a long stay, not new arrivals.
• Refugees and protected persons, including people given temporary resident status in defined safe-haven circumstances.
• Diplomats and international organization staff holding the diplomatic, consular, official, or special representative acceptance prescribed in the regulations.
• A non-Canadian spouse or common-law partner buying jointly with a spouse or partner who is a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, a registered Indian, or an exempt temporary resident.

Separate from those buyer classes, the Act does not prohibit certain acquisitions that arrive by operation of law or family breakdown rather than by a market purchase, including acquisitions on death, under a divorce or separation settlement, and a financial institution taking property in satisfaction of a security interest. These are exceptions to be confirmed on the facts by counsel, not planning tools.

Two warnings belong with this list. First, an exemption has to be positively established for the specific transaction, with documents. A buyer who assumes an exemption and closes without one has committed the offence described in the next section. Second, a federal exemption is not a provincial tax exemption. The work permit route is the trap: it lets a permit holder buy a home in Ontario today, and Ontario's 25 percent tax still applies to that purchase, because Ontario's exemption list does not include work permit holders as a class. The two lists have to be checked separately, every time.

What breaking the ban costs

Contravening the prohibition is an offence. A non-Canadian who purchases prohibited property, and any person or entity that counsels, aids, or abets the purchase, can be fined up to $10,000 on conviction. A court can also order the property sold. CMHC administers the public information on the Act, and the text that governs is the Act and the regulations as published on the Justice Laws website. The fine is small next to the prices in this guide. The forced sale is the real sanction: a buyer who closes in breach can be made to unwind the purchase in whatever market exists at the time, with the transaction costs of two closings and any price movement in between falling on them.

For a purchase being planned now, the practical reading is narrow. A closing that completes while the Act is in force has to fit an exemption or sit outside the covered property and geography. A purchase that completes on or after January 1, 2027 falls outside the Act as scheduled. Deals that straddle the date, signed in 2026 and closing in 2027, turn on when the purchase legally completes and on the transitional wording, and a straddling file is a question for a real estate lawyer in writing before conditions are waived.

January 1, 2027: the change table

Question	Before January 1, 2027	On and after January 1, 2027, as scheduled
Can a non-Canadian with no exemption buy a condo in Toronto or Vancouver?	No. Prohibited, an offence, forced sale possible	Yes, federally. Provincial and municipal purchase taxes apply
Can a non-Canadian buy a fourplex or an apartment building?	Yes. Outside the federal definition	Yes. Unchanged
Can a non-Canadian buy vacant residential land in a city?	Yes, since the March 2023 amendments	Yes. Unchanged
Does Ontario's 25 percent NRST change?	Applies	Applies. Provincial law, no link to the federal expiry
Does Toronto's 10 percent municipal tax change?	Applies	Applies
Does BC's 20 percent additional transfer tax change?	Applies in five regional districts	Applies
Does Nova Scotia's 10 percent deed transfer tax change?	Applies to non-residents of Nova Scotia	Applies
Do annual vacancy taxes and declarations change?	Apply	Apply

The single row that moves is the first one. Everything a buyer pays, as opposed to whether a buyer may buy at all, is in the rows that do not move. The next four sections price those rows province by province.

Ontario: the 25 percent non-resident speculation tax

Ontario's non-resident speculation tax (NRST) is the oldest of the purchase taxes and the one with the widest reach. It began on April 21, 2017 at 15 percent, limited to the Greater Golden Horseshoe. On March 30, 2022 the rate rose to 20 percent and the tax expanded to all of Ontario. On October 25, 2022 the rate rose again, to 25 percent, where it remains.

The mechanics, from the Ontario Ministry of Finance's NRST guidance:

• Who pays. Foreign entities, meaning foreign nationals (individuals who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents) and foreign corporations, and taxable trustees holding for foreign beneficiaries.
• What property. Transfers of land containing one to six single-family residences, anywhere in Ontario. Land with more than six single-family residences, agricultural land, commercial land, and industrial land are outside the tax. On mixed-use land, the tax applies to the residential portion.
• The base. 25 percent of the value of the consideration for the interest transferred to the foreign entity. A Canadian co-buyer does not wash the tax out: Ontario states that the tax applies even if the other transferees are Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or non-foreign corporations, and the foreign transferee's interest is taxed.
• On top of, not instead of. The NRST is charged in addition to ordinary land transfer tax, through the same registration system, and it is payable at closing. It cannot be added to the mortgage.

Older guides are the main source of error on this tax. Anything that quotes 15 percent, or describes the tax as a Greater Golden Horseshoe measure, is describing the pre-2022 law. A cottage purchase near Kenora by a foreign national is taxed at the same 25 percent as a semi-detached house in Scarborough, and has been since March 2022.

Ontario exemptions

An exemption may be available for a registered transfer where the transferee is one of three classes, with conditions attached to each:

• A nominee under the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, nominated at the time of the transaction, who has applied or will apply for permanent residence before the nominee certificate expires.
• A protected person under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
• The spouse of a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, a nominee, or a protected person, where the spouses buy together.

The conditions do real work. Every other person acquiring an interest in the same transaction must also be a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, a nominee, or a protected person, and every individual acquiring an interest must certify that they will occupy the property as their principal residence within 60 days after the transfer is registered. An exemption is claimed at registration, supported by documentation the ministry can ask for. An investor purchase, a purchase with an outside co-investor, or a purchase the buyer will not live in fails the exemption structure even where the buyer's own status fits a class.

Ontario rebates: the permanent resident route back

Ontario separates exemptions, which prevent the tax, from rebates, which return it after payment. Two rebates are currently listed by the ministry:

• The permanent resident rebate. A foreign entity that paid the NRST may get it back if the transferee becomes a permanent resident of Canada within four years of the date the transfer was registered. The remaining conditions track the exemption logic: the property must be held alone or only with a spouse, it must be occupied as the buyer's principal residence, and the application must be filed within 180 days of becoming a permanent resident. The rebate is real money, but the timing is the cost: on a $900,000 purchase the buyer has $225,000 of tax money tied up from closing until permanent residence is granted and the rebate is processed, which can be years.
• The industrial use rebate, for a purchase of residential property that has been repurposed for industrial use, available for conveyances on or after November 6, 2025.

The rebates that older guides still describe for international students and foreign nationals working in Ontario are closed. For binding agreements entered into on or after March 30, 2022, those rebates were removed, and the transitional application deadline for earlier agreements passed on March 31, 2025. A 2027 buyer has exactly one personal route back, the permanent resident rebate, and it should be priced as a loan to the province for the intervening years, not as a discount.

Our Ontario closing costs guide sets out where the NRST sits inside the full closing bill for the province, next to land transfer tax, the Toronto charges below, and the tax on the mortgage insurance premium where default insurance applies.

Toronto: the extra 10 percent most buyers miss

Toronto added a municipal layer on January 1, 2025. The Municipal Non-Resident Speculation Tax (MNRST) charges 10 percent of the purchase price to foreign entities buying land with one to six single-family residences inside the City of Toronto, on transfers registered on or after that date. It is payable in addition to the provincial NRST, so the combined speculation tax on a Toronto purchase is 35 percent of the price, and both sit on top of the ordinary provincial and municipal land transfer taxes, which a Toronto buyer pays twice by design.

The city publishes the program rules and a combined MLTT and MNRST calculator on its municipal land transfer tax pages, and the municipal tax is built on the same architecture as the provincial one, with its own exemption and rebate provisions in the same categories. The practical consequence is administrative as much as financial: a Toronto file has two speculation taxes to clear, claimed through two governments, and a lawyer has to address both at registration. A buyer quoted a single 25 percent figure for a Toronto purchase by a seller, an agent, or a stale guide is being underquoted by ten points of the price. On an $800,000 condo that underquote is $80,000, priced in full in the examples section below.

British Columbia: 20 percent, in five regional districts only

British Columbia's version is an additional property transfer tax, charged under the same statute as the general property transfer tax. The rate is 20 percent. Some national guides quote 25 percent for British Columbia by copying the Ontario figure; the province's own additional tax page states 20 percent, and 20 percent is the rate used in the examples below.

The mechanics, from the Province of British Columbia's additional property transfer tax guidance:

• Who pays. Foreign nationals, foreign corporations, and taxable trustees.
• Where. Residential property inside five specified areas only: the Capital Regional District, the Fraser Valley Regional District, the Metro Vancouver Regional District, the Regional District of Central Okanagan, and the Regional District of Nanaimo. A purchase outside those districts, in Prince George, Cranbrook, or most of the province, attracts no additional tax. The tax does not apply to property on Tsawwassen First Nation treaty lands.
• The base. 20 percent of the fair market value of the buyer's proportionate share of the residential portion. The province's own example: a foreign entity acquiring a 70 percent interest pays the additional tax on 70 percent of the residential fair market value. On mixed-use property, only the residential portion is taxed.
• On top of the general tax. The general property transfer tax is still payable on the same purchase, at the standard rates of 1 percent on the first $200,000 of fair market value and 2 percent on the portion above $200,000 up to $2,000,000, with higher rates above that.

BC exemptions, and the spouse trap

The exemption list is short. A confirmed British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program nominee does not pay the additional tax where the property will be the nominee's principal residence, the transfer is to the individual, and the nomination is confirmed when the transfer is registered. The exemption can be claimed only once. A qualifying Canadian-controlled limited partnership acquisition is also exempt under conditions the province lists, including that every general partner is a citizen, a permanent resident, or a non-foreign corporation, and that the combined interest of foreign limited partners is under half of the profit entitlement.

The detail that catches families is on the province's own page: family members of a nominee, including a spouse or common-law partner, are not exempt, and a foreign national spouse on title pays the additional tax on their proportionate share. A couple that puts both names on title to be tidy can create a five-figure tax bill on the spouse's share that a single-name purchase by the nominee would not have carried. Title structure is a tax decision in British Columbia, and it has to be made before registration, with the family-law consequences of single-name title weighed at the same time. Our BC closing costs guide prices the general transfer tax side of the same closing.

Nova Scotia: the 10 percent tax that also catches Canadians

Nova Scotia's provincial deed transfer tax for non-residents is the outlier in this guide, because its trigger is different. The federal ban and the Ontario and BC taxes test citizenship and permanent residence. Nova Scotia tests residency in Nova Scotia. A Canadian citizen who lives in Alberta and buys a house in Lunenburg is a non-resident for this tax, and so is a permanent resident living in Ontario who buys a cottage near Halifax. Moving provinces, not crossing a border, is what the tax prices.

The tax is set out in the province's Non-resident Deed Transfer Tax Act. It took effect on April 1, 2022 at 5 percent, charged where an ownership interest went to non-residents. The structure has tightened twice since:

• From July 1, 2023, the tax applies where any ownership interest is granted to one or more non-residents, not only where the non-resident share passes 50 percent.
• From April 1, 2025, the rate is 10 percent, up from 5 percent. An agreement of purchase and sale entered into before April 1, 2025 is still calculated under the earlier 5 percent rules.

The base is the greater of the sale price and the assessed value, multiplied by the percentage ownership interest granted to the non-resident buyers. The greater-of rule removes the discount strategy: buying below assessment does not shrink the tax, because the province taxes the assessed value instead.

The exemption that matters most is the mover's exemption in the province's guidelines: a non-resident buyer who moves to Nova Scotia within six months of the transfer is exempt, which is what separates a relocation purchase from a cottage purchase in the province's design. Transfers of residential property with more than three dwelling units are outside the tax, as are defined family and estate transfers, including transfers between spouses and transfers under a will. Nova Scotia also charges non-resident owners an annual provincial property tax, set at $2 per $100 of assessed value when the measures were introduced in 2022, with relief where the property is rented to Nova Scotia residents on a long-term basis. A non-resident buying in Nova Scotia should price both the deed tax at closing and the annual charge for every year the property is held and not rented long-term. Because this province has amended its rules in 2023, 2025, and again since, the mover's window and the current annual tax treatment should be confirmed with a Nova Scotia lawyer on the actual agreement dates.

Everywhere else: the short list

• Alberta has no foreign buyer purchase tax. A non-Canadian buying in Calgary or Edmonton faces the federal ban until January 1, 2027, because both cities are census metropolitan areas, and no provincial speculation tax on either side of that date. Alberta also has no land transfer tax, which is why the province is the cheapest major market in this guide at closing for any buyer.
• Quebec has no general foreign buyer purchase tax. Its long-standing restriction is narrower: provincial law regulates non-residents acquiring agricultural land, with a threshold of more than four hectares. A foreign buyer of a Montreal condo deals with the federal ban and ordinary Quebec duties, not a speculation tax.
• The remaining provinces have no general purchase tax on foreign buyers of the Ontario or BC kind. Provincial rules on land holding by non-residents exist in places, Prince Edward Island's land protection regime being the best known, and they are approval regimes for land quantity rather than percentage taxes on price. Any specific province and property type still needs a local check, because these regimes sit in land law rather than in tax tables.

Our provincial housing policy comparison puts these purchase rules next to the supply and tenancy policies each province runs, and our guide for newcomers buying with a mortgage covers the financing side for buyers who have recently arrived, whose constraint is usually the mortgage file rather than the tax file.

The bill, priced five ways

Every purchase below is a labelled hypothetical. The prices are round numbers chosen so the arithmetic can be checked by hand. Each example assumes a buyer who is a foreign entity for the tax in question, taking a 100 percent interest unless the example says otherwise, with no exemption, closing on or after January 1, 2027 so the federal ban is not in the way. Ordinary closing costs beyond the transfer taxes named, legal fees, and any GST or HST on a new home are outside these figures.

Example	Purchase	Calculation	Transfer taxes at closing
A. Toronto condo, foreign buyer	$800,000 condominium in the City of Toronto	NRST 25 percent = $200,000. Toronto MNRST 10 percent = $80,000. Ordinary land transfer tax: $12,475 provincial plus $12,475 Toronto municipal	$304,950 in total, of which $280,000 is speculation tax
B. The same Toronto condo, Canadian citizen living abroad	$800,000, buyer is a citizen, resident overseas for tax purposes	No NRST and no MNRST, because both taxes test citizenship and permanent residence, not address. Ordinary land transfer tax only: $12,475 plus $12,475	$24,950
C. Vancouver house, foreign buyer	$1,200,000 house in Metro Vancouver	Additional property transfer tax 20 percent = $240,000. General property transfer tax: 1 percent of $200,000 plus 2 percent of $1,000,000 = $22,000	$262,000
D. Victoria condo, half interest	$900,000 fair market value, foreign buyer takes a 50 percent interest	Additional tax on the proportionate share only: 20 percent of $450,000	$90,000, plus the general transfer tax on the transfer
E. Halifax-area home, buyer from another province	$450,000 home, buyer is a Canadian resident of another province, agreement after April 1, 2025, price at or above assessed value	Nova Scotia deed transfer tax 10 percent of $450,000	$45,000, or $0 if the buyer moves to Nova Scotia inside the mover's exemption

Example A against Example B is the whole guide in two rows. The two buyers sign the same agreement, at the same price, in the same building, and can even live on the same street overseas afterward. The $280,000 difference between their closing bills is produced entirely by citizenship status on the registration date. That is also why status planning has a hard edge: status is a legal fact on a date, established with passports, permanent resident cards, and nomination certificates, not a position a buyer can argue into after closing.

Example E is the mirror image. No border is crossed, no citizenship question arises, and a $45,000 provincial tax appears anyway, because Nova Scotia wrote its trigger around provincial residency. Interprovincial movers who dawdle, buying the Nova Scotia house months before the move and outside the mover's window, are the buyers this tax surprises.

Will the expiry move prices?

The fear attached to the expiry date is that a wave of returning foreign demand lands on Toronto and Vancouver at once. The ownership data argues for a smaller effect, in aggregate, with one segment worth watching.

Statistics Canada's Canadian Housing Statistics Program measures non-resident ownership as a share of the residential stock. For 2022, the most recent year summarized in the provincial release of the program data checked for this guide, non-residents owned 3.6 percent of residential properties in Nova Scotia, the highest provincial rate, 3.1 percent in British Columbia, and 1.7 percent in Manitoba, the lowest of the provinces reported. The same summary describes the national picture as stable since 2020. These are shares of all residential properties, and they are small. A buyer group that holds about three percent of the stock, and whose purchases were a fraction of annual transactions even before 2023, does not reprice a national market by returning to it.

Three qualifications keep that conclusion in its lane:

1. The aggregate is not the segment. Non-resident ownership has always concentrated in condominium apartments. In the program's 2018 release, 7.6 percent of British Columbia condominium apartments were non-resident owned, more than double the all-property rate for the province in that release. If returning demand concentrates anywhere after January 2027, pre-construction and newly completed condos in Toronto and Vancouver are the segment with the history for it, and the segment where developers count non-resident pre-sales when they arrange construction financing.
2. The taxes are now the binding constraint, and they are large. Before 2017, a foreign buyer in Toronto paid the same transfer tax as a local. In 2027 that buyer pays 35 percent in speculation taxes at closing. Demand that returns at a 35 percent entry toll is a different quantity of demand, and it is the provinces, not the expiring federal Act, that set the toll.
3. The ban coincided with a much larger force. Canadian prices rose and then corrected through the sharpest interest rate cycle in a generation while the ban was in force. Attributing the correction, or any future firming, to a buyer group measured in low single digits of the stock credits the ban with work that interest rates did. Our September 2026 affordability meter prices that rate cycle city by city, which is the larger side of the market.

The priced conclusion for a Canadian seller is modest: the expiry removes a legal barrier for a small, tax-deterred buyer group, in a market where the remaining taxes were designed to keep that group small. For a non-Canadian buyer, the conclusion is the mirror image: 2027 opens the door, and the bill at the door is the subject of the checklists below.

Two checklists

Buying as a non-Canadian before January 1, 2027

1. Place the property on the map first. Inside a CMA or CA, or outside one? The federal answer turns on that line before anything else.
2. Count the units. Four or more dwelling units, or vacant land, sits outside the prohibition today. Three or fewer inside a census urban area is the prohibited core.
3. Test your buyer class against the exemption list, with documents: work permit validity in days remaining, the student five-year record, protected status, or a spouse who carries an exemption and will take title jointly.
4. Check the corporate chain if a company is buying. A Canadian corporation controlled at the 10 percent level by non-Canadians is itself a non-Canadian under the Act.
5. Run the provincial tax for the same purchase separately. A federal exemption does not answer the Ontario, Toronto, BC, or Nova Scotia question.
6. Get the status opinion in writing from a real estate lawyer in the purchase province before waiving conditions. The offence and the forced-sale order are the cost of getting step 3 wrong.

Planning a purchase for 2027

1. Work on the law as scheduled: the ban ceases January 1, 2027, and a late extension would arrive the way the 2024 one did, by announcement and legislation.
2. Budget the purchase taxes at the full rates: 25 percent plus 10 percent in Toronto, 25 percent elsewhere in Ontario, 20 percent in the five BC districts, 10 percent in Nova Scotia for a non-resident of that province, on top of ordinary transfer tax.
3. Decide title structure before the offer. In BC, a nominee's foreign spouse on title pays on their share. In Ontario, an exemption needs every transferee inside the eligible classes and a principal residence certification.
4. If permanent residence is genuinely in progress, price the Ontario rebate as a timing cost: the tax is paid at closing and returned only after status is granted, the property is held alone or with a spouse, and the application lands within 180 days.
5. Separate the purchase taxes from the annual ones. A BC purchase that clears the transfer taxes can still carry the speculation and vacancy tax every year it sits underused, and a Nova Scotia purchase carries that province's annual non-resident property tax on the same logic.
6. For a deal signed in 2026 and closing in 2027, get written advice on which side of the expiry the purchase falls. Do not let a closing date drift across January 1 by accident, in either direction.

The errors that cost people money here

• Treating the expiry as a tax holiday. January 1, 2027 changes whether a purchase is allowed. It changes nothing about what the purchase costs in the four taxing jurisdictions.
• Quoting British Columbia at 25 percent. The BC additional tax is 20 percent. The 25 percent figure is Ontario's, and guides that swap them overstate a $1,200,000 Vancouver purchase by $60,000.
• Quoting Ontario at 15 percent, or as a Toronto-area tax. Both describe the law before March 2022. The current tax is 25 percent, province-wide.
• Assuming a work permit solves the tax. The permit is a federal ban exemption. Ontario charges its 25 percent to a work permit holder with no exemption of its own for the class, and BC charges its 20 percent to a permit holder who is not a confirmed provincial nominee.
• Assuming a Canadian spouse on title removes the Ontario tax. Ontario taxes the foreign transferee's interest even where the other transferees are Canadian, and the spousal exemption has its own conditions, including joint purchase and principal residence certification by every buyer.
• Assuming a corporation steps around the rules. The federal Act catches Canadian corporations controlled by non-Canadians at 10 percent, and both provinces tax foreign corporations and taxable trustees directly.
• Forgetting Nova Scotia is a residency test. Canadians moving provinces are the buyers with no reason to expect a non-resident tax, and the province where they can owe 10 percent at closing.

Sources

• Department of Finance Canada, Government announces two-year extension to ban on foreign ownership of Canadian housing, February 4, 2024 (canada.ca).
• CMHC, Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act, program page, and Amendments to the Act's accompanying Regulations, March 27, 2023 (cmhc-schl.gc.ca).
• Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Regulations, SOR/2022-250, as amended (laws-lois.justice.gc.ca).
• Ontario Ministry of Finance, Non-Resident Speculation Tax guidance, including exemptions and the permanent resident and industrial use rebates (ontario.ca).
• City of Toronto, Municipal Land Transfer Tax and Municipal Non-Resident Speculation Tax program pages (toronto.ca).
• Province of British Columbia, Additional property transfer tax for foreign entities and taxable trustees (www2.gov.bc.ca).
• Province of Nova Scotia, Non-resident Deed Transfer Tax Act (nslegislature.ca), and the province's 2022 non-resident tax guidelines as summarized by Stewart McKelvey.
• Statistics Canada, Canadian Housing Statistics Program, 2022 non-resident ownership shares, as summarized by the Nova Scotia Department of Finance; 2018 program release for the British Columbia condominium share.