One of Canada’s largest real estate developers, Rob Rennie, recently said he’s working with Prime Minister-designate Mark Carney to allow foreign buyers to access a taxpayer-subsidized rental property development fund.
Rennie, a prominent Vancouver real estate marketer who earned the nickname the “condo king”, outlined the initiative during a ConversationLive panel discussion on Canada’s housing market.
Rennie claimed that he and Carney were working together to create a “rental program” open to foreign investors who want to build and buy homes domestically. To sweeten the deal, the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation would finance pre-sales and offer preferred rates.
“But I’m working with Carney, surprise, and I’m trying to get a rental program in where people buy, put it into a 25-year pool,” said Rennie.
“Get a preferred rate from CMHC and let’s allow foreign buyers to buy it. They have to rent it out for 25 years and it’ll show the world that we’re open for business. Because right now, all our levels of government are showing that we’re not open for business.”
Rennie also cited the foreign buyers tax as contributing to the housing shortage, bragging that he fought tooth and nail against it.
Former B.C. premier Christy Clark imposed a 15 per cent foreign buyers tax for outside investors looking to buy in the province in 2016, something that Rennie said was “visibly against the Asian market.”
“I think the foreign buyers tax has caused racism because we’re not against people from Germany buying, we’re looking at colour of skin,” he said.
However, the federal government also prohibited non-Canadians from acquiring residential real estate in 2022 and extended its ban on foreign home buyers to 2027 last year.
Non-Canadians who are buying vacant land or residential property that has yet to be developed were carved out of the ban.
The CMHC, a state-owned mortgage insurer, was originally designed to help Canadians purchase homes. However, in recent years the agency has since shifted to lender de-risking, which has led to major housing inflation.
Even many domestic investors have been pushed out of the market as a result of wealthier investors entering the Canadian market.
Rennie’s plan could spur on faster development because it reduces the risk taken on by investors by placing it on to Canadian taxpayers.
While it likely would usher in more rental properties into a housing market facing a dramatic shortage, it will certainly decrease Canadian home ownership.
“I think it would be a really soft point, and maybe as Trump goes the other way, we start to get into targeted immigration. If we need nurses, let’s bring in nurses. If we need unskilled labour, let’s bring in unskilled labour,” said Rennie.
“But I think if we get a creative housing program, because we’re seeing with the data,” he continued, “that people want to marry immigration to housing supply.”
“We’re going into the next two years, first time since confederation, negative population growth. When you take deaths and births, less, with lower immigration. That’s not how you’re going to grow a country,” said Rennie. “I need somebody to pay taxes and bring me a bedpan in 20 years but if we’re not bringing people in, we won’t have it.”
Carney did not respond to True North’s request for comment.