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In January, Shinna Zhang and her husband moved to Metro Vancouver from London, England. They entered Canada on her husband’s work permit.

Zhang, who didn’t want her husband’s name to be used because he works in Vancouver’s growing tech sector, said they decided to buy a home in Richmond in May, in part because she became pregnant.

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They found a townhouse being offered for sale for $850,000 by a woman whose family split their time between Richmond and China.

The two parties agreed the deal would conclude on Nov. 1, largely to give the former owner time to find another home elsewhere in Metro. Part of the complication was that the former owner had two children who were moving back and forth between Richmond and China.

Now, with the new foreign owners property purchase tax set to go into effect Aug. 2, Zhang and her husband face an additional $130,000 bill to the government.

“We have no way to change the contract and no money to pay that significant amount,” Zhang said. “When we decided to buy, we did it according to what our mortgage would allow us to buy. The original transfer tax was two per cent, which we planned for.”