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New immigrants to Metro Vancouver are much more likely to buy mansions than Canadian-born residents, according to a new Statistics Canada report.

The detached houses bought by recent immigrants to Metro Vancouver are, on average, valued $824,000 higher than such homes owned by people born in Canada.

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The typical value of a detached Metro Vancouver home purchased by a new immigrant was $2.3 million in 2017, compared to $1.5 million for that of a Canadian-born person.

The housing gap grows even wider depending on the category of immigrant. The average value of a detached house bought by more than 4,400 millionaire immigrants who came to Metro Vancouver in the past decade under the federal government’s now-defunct investor program, or the investor scheme still operated by Quebec, is more than $3.2 million.

Citizens of specific countries arrive with the most to spend on dwellings. “Recent investor immigrants born in China and Iran own higher-value single-detached properties in Vancouver than those from other countries,” said the new Statistics Canada report, which is the first by the federal data agency to examine immigrant ownership rates in Toronto and Metro Vancouver.