American searches for Canadian real estate skyrocketed since Trump election

Jan 20 2017, 8:19 am

With Donald Trump in the White House, the Americans really ARE coming to Canada, it seems. Or at least that’s what the latest figures from Royal LePage seem to suggest.

According to a release from the Canadian real estate company, American interest in Canadian property has skyrocketed since the election of Trump last year.

US searches of their real estate portal royallepage.ca reportedly shot up 329% the day after Donald Trump’s victory last November.

Unsurprising, given that shocked Americans had already supposedly crashed the Canadian immigration website on election night.

But this wasn’t just a kneejerk reaction; over the whole of November, said the Royal LePage release, US web traffic to their portal was 73.7% higher than November the previous year.

And for the whole of the fourth quarter in 2016, American web traffic was up 40.9% compared to Q4 in 2015, with 75% of those visitors looking for residential property.

‘A happy and culturally tolerant place’

In the release, Phil Soper, president and CEO, said Americans have always been the largest group of foreign buyers of recreational property in Canada – but this was different.

“With our country’s ever-growing global reputation as a financially sound, happy and culturally tolerant place to raise a family, it is not surprising that interest has moved from a place to play, to a potential place to live and work,” said Soper.

See also

As well as measuring web traffic, Royal LePage also polled 1,226 of their realtors across Canada to find out whether Americans had been following through on their web searches.

In Q4 of 2016 – in which November and December are usually quieter times for North American real estate activity – 15.6% of the advisors polled got inquiries from America.

“Given America’s vast population, even a fractional increase in the number of households
following through on this initial interest and successfully completing the demanding process of emigrating to Canada could drive a material increase in the number of home-buyers from south of the border,” said Soper.

US interest from coast to coast to coast

American Interest in Canadian Real Estate in the Fourth Quarter of 2016 (Royal LePage)

American Interest in Canadian Real Estate in the Fourth Quarter of 2016 (Royal LePage)

Many of those Americans looking for real estate chose to focus on British Columbia, with our gorgeous province accounting for 17.4% of US searches on Royal LePage in Q4 2016.

But intriguingly, Americans were more interested in real estate in Victoria than Vancouver; 32% preferred the capital, while only 25% preferred Metro Vancouver.

Overall, in terms of level of American interest, BC came second only to Ontario, which garnered 41.4% of the Royal LePage searches originating in America in the fourth quarter.

“Our federal government is seriously considering increasing the quota of new Canadians welcomed from abroad,” said Soper.

“With the high value of the US dollar increasing Americans’ purchasing power, we may be seeing more moving trucks with US licence plates in our future.”

Jenni SheppardJenni Sheppard

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