‘Vast majority’ of Edmonton property owners live in Alberta, mail outs show

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Destinations for Edmonton’s tax mail outs last year are offering a window into foreign property ownership, suggesting less than one per cent of properties belong to those outside the country.

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Most of the city’s property tax assessments were sent to Edmonton addresses in 2021, and nearly all were sent to locations within the province. Of the total 416,563 property tax notices, 91.7 per cent of destinations (381,955) were in Edmonton, and 97.2 per cent (404,888) were in Alberta, the most recent data available from the city shows. Canadian addresses received more than 99 per cent of notices.

Outside this province, British Columbians appear to have the highest share of Edmonton property. Last year, 6,151 notices were sent to BC addresses, which accounts for 1.5 per cent of all property tax notices.

Just 578 notices, or 0.14 pr cent of the total, were sent to addresses outside Canada, 423 of which were in the United States. By comparison, 0.2 per cent (1,185) of Calgary’s 2022 residential property tax notices were dispatched internationally.

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Figures provided by the City of Edmonton combined residential and other property types.

Tax mailouts aren’t a perfect metric for analyzing who owns local properties, the city notes. This data captures only where assessments were sent, not the nationalities of property owners.

People or companies located outside Alberta or Canada may direct notices to a local address even if they don’t live here, “however, general trends indicate that the vast majority of Edmonton property owners reside in Alberta,” reads a statement sent by city spokesperson MattPretty.

Empty homes tax?

Coun. Michael Janz, who also requested the city’s data after reading a similar report in the Calgary Herald, said he was interested in learning about Edmonton’s situation given the federal government’s temporary ban on foreign home buyers in hopes of cooling the housing market.

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Edmonton should be looking at all sorts of options, including an empty homes tax similar to Vancouver’s, a different tax rate for multi-million-dollar homes, or cracking down on real estate investment trusts, while also focusing on building more non-market and co-op housing, he said in an interview on Wednesday.

“We’ve left the housing market to the invisible hand of housing capitalism and it has led to skyrocketing problems,” he said. “Foreign ownership is but one piece of that, that we’re seeing housing treated as an investment vehicle, not as a human right.”

While most homes seem to be owned by Edmontonians, Janz worries that in time this could change with the potential for speculators to grab up local property as in Toronto and Vancouver.

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He worries that Edmontonians, including renters trying to save up for a downpayment, may have to compete against foreign investors and other speculators when looking for a home.

“Alberta is stable, we have a growing economy: the bones of Edmonton are very strong,” he said. “I see these same investors and the same problems that cratered affordable housing in other Canadian cities moving westward.”

Investors not flocking to Edmonton

But Paul Gravelle, Realtors Association of Edmonton chair, said at this point Edmonton doesn’t have a lot of interest from foreign investors, although the local housing market has been heating up.

“It’s relatively small,” he said. “When the government announced a ban on foreign ownership we’re like, ‘yeah, that doesn’t affect us at all.’”

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With skyrocketing home prices and rents in other parts of the country, buyers from other parts of Canada are taking notice of Alberta — including some investors — but Gravelle said this has always been the case.

“It’s a little bit more than before, (but) I wouldn’t say it’s new. We’ve always had investors from outside Alberta come into our market,” he said.

“There’s no worry about foreign investment necessarily in our market. There are some from across Canada … I wouldn’t say it’s any higher than normal, maybe a little bit, but it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

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@laurby