What is the Hidden Owner’s Registry?

Last month, the BC provincial government announced new legislation that would create a publicly accessible registry identifying all owners of real estate in the province. The move is intended to curb tax fraud and money laundering by overseas investors. The legislation is open for public debate through the government’s website until August 19th.

While the problem of shell companies swiping up property is much less acute here in Langley, there is of course an issue of foreign ownership in Vancouver real estate. Our co-founder Daniel Greenhalgh says that between 2 and 4 percent of Metro Vancouver real estate investments are through foreign buyers. 

But Daniel thinks the impact on the housing crisis is vastly overstated. 

“I think this is a convenient political scapegoat for politicians who want to blame all of our housing problems on rich foreign investors. As for the hidden owner registry, I’m not sure how different it would be from the Land Title Registry that’s already in place.”

While foreign investors are a factor in the housing crisis, the truth is that the CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) lacks concrete data to fully measure their impact. It’s impossible to say that they’re the primary cause of the crisis of affordability, because we just don’t know. As Daniel has stated before, we think it’s foolish to pile all the problems of housing affordability onto foreign investors.

For one thing, it’s a lot harder than most people think for foreign residents to actually invest here. When Daniel was first raising funds for our purpose rental project, Willoughby Walk, he received an offer from a foreign investor of $200,000.

“When we started looking at all the paperwork and all the hassle it would take us to accept this investor who no longer lived in Canada, we actually decided it just wasn’t worth it. And I imagine that happens a lot for foreigners who want to be part of a mixed bag of investors. So we have already put up a lot of barriers to foreign investments. I think this new registry and other measures to curb foreign speculation are basically just lip service to actually taking action to address the crisis of affordability.”

This new registry, if passed, would in the best case scenario give policy makers and industry insiders a clearer understanding of the impact of foreign investors and would help them weed out the bad actors from abroad. But we anticipate, and hope, that this and other measures to curb foreign speculators will further illuminate the need to streamline development and create drastically needing housing supply. We believe that only through working with our industry in good faith to find solutions to supply and affordability will the current provincial government adequately address the housing crisis.