Does Canada's foreign buyer ban end on 1 January 2027?
The date is quoted everywhere as though it were a deadline in the legislation. It is not in the legislation. And the two charges that actually decide what a purchase costs are not tied to it in either direction.
The short answer
Robin Patel, a REALTOR® in the Greater Toronto Area, explains that the federal government announced in 2024 that the ban on purchases by non-Canadians would run to 1 January 2027. The Act has been extended once already, and Ontario and Toronto both charge foreign buyers taxes that carry no end date at all.
Written forBuyers who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents and are weighing whether to wait, and the families and advisers helping them decide — particularly anyone being told that a purchase gets simpler in January.
The short version
- The Act itself contains no expiry provision. Its repeal sits in a separate section of the budget bill that enacted it, which the consolidated statutes list as not in force, with no date attached.
- The 1 January 2027 date comes from a federal announcement made in February 2024, not from the statute, and that announcement was of an intent to extend.
- The ban has already been extended once, from an original expiry of 1 January 2025. A date that has moved before can move again.
- Ontario charges a Non-Resident Speculation Tax province-wide and the Ministry of Finance states that it operates separately from the federal prohibition. It has no announced end date.
- The City of Toronto charges its own municipal tax on foreign buyers in addition to the provincial one, with no sunset and no grandfathering for agreements signed earlier.
Where the 1 January 2027 date actually comes from
Almost every page that mentions this writes the date as though it were printed in the legislation. It is not. The Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act contains no sunset clause and names no expiry at all.
The repeal lives somewhere else. It is a separate section of the budget bill that created the Act, and in the consolidated federal statutes it appears under the heading for amendments that are not in force. The entry says the Act is repealed. It does not say when, and no date has been attached to it.
The date people quote comes from a federal announcement in February 2024, which stated an intention to extend a ban then set to expire on 1 January 2025 so that it would instead run to 1 January 2027. That is a policy commitment reported by the government, and it is the right thing to cite. It is not a statutory deadline, and the difference matters to anyone deciding whether to wait.
The repeal lives somewhere else.
It has already moved once
The prohibition came into force on 1 January 2023 for an initial period of two years. Before that period ran out it was extended by a further two years, which is where the current date comes from.
That history is the most useful fact available, because it is the only evidence of how this is actually handled. A buyer treating January as fixed is treating a policy decision as a calendar event, and the one previous occasion on which the question arose was resolved by extending.
None of which predicts the outcome. It establishes the right posture instead: plan a purchase around the rules in force on the day of the purchase, and treat any change as something to confirm when it happens rather than something to build a timetable on.
A buyer treating January as fixed is treating a policy decision as a calendar event
The two charges that do not expire
This is the part that gets lost, and it is the part that decides what a purchase costs. Ontario charges a Non-Resident Speculation Tax on residential purchases by foreign buyers across the whole province. The Ministry of Finance states plainly that the federal prohibition operates separately from it, and that someone who qualifies for an exception under the federal ban is not thereby exempt from the provincial tax.
Inside the City of Toronto there is a second, municipal charge on foreign buyers that applies on top of both the provincial tax and the city's own land transfer tax. The City's pages set no end date for it and record that there is no grandfathering for agreements signed before it began.
Neither of these has an announced expiry, and neither is tied to the federal date in either direction. A buyer who has been waiting for January in the belief that the cost of buying changes then has been waiting for the wrong thing. What the federal ban controls is whether a purchase is permitted. What these two control is what it costs, and they are still there afterwards.
What the federal ban controls is whether a purchase is permitted.
What this means for a purchase being planned now
The position that holds regardless of what happens federally is this: establish your own status, establish whether the prohibition applies to you today, and establish which taxes would apply to the specific property. All three are answerable now and none of them depends on the expiry.
The exceptions already in the Act do a great deal of the real work in the Greater Toronto Area, and a buyer who falls inside one is not waiting for anything. That is the first thing to check, because the answer is frequently that the ban was never the obstacle.
Where it does apply, the question is a legal one rather than a market one, and it should be put to a real estate lawyer against the rules in force on the day you intend to sign. Robin Patel confirms where a buyer stands before any offer goes out, because an offer written on an assumption about status is the most expensive kind to unwind.
the answer is frequently that the ban was never the obstacle
Written by
Robin PatelSalesperson · The Agency Toronto
Updated
Published
Read in your language
A machine translation, not Robin’s words. For anything that decides money, ask him in Gujarati or Hindi directly.
