Vancouver home sales fell 26 per cent in August from a year earlier and prices slid as the government’s moves to cool the market by taxing foreign buyers crimped demand.

Sales dropped to 2,489 transactions, 23 per cent lower than July, according to a statement from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. The average price of a detached property declined 17 per cent on the month, and 0.6 per cent on the year, to $1.47 million in August, the lowest since September 2015.

The British Columbia government’s new 15 per cent tax on foreign homebuyers, designed to help cool the Vancouver market after average prices in that city doubled over the past decade, took effect Aug. 2. Friday’s data show the tax “appears to have added” to a slowing trend that started several months ago, Dan Morrison, president of the real estate board, said in the release.

At the same time, governments of all levels are deriving the biggest share of their revenue from housing and related activities—about 17 per cent—in about two decades, according to a National Bank of Canada report this month.

There’s an “imbalance between supply and demand in most communities,” Morrison said. His group opposed the tax after it was announced as it also applied to pending transactions, leaving many buyers shouldering an unexpected tax and sellers with scuttled deals. “However, we’re also seeing fewer detached sales in the highest price points and fewer detached home sales relative to all residential sales.”

The city is still the least affordable in the country. About 90 per cent of a typical family’s income is now going to service a mortgage and pay property taxes and utility bills in Vancouver, double the national average, according to a Royal Bank of Canada second-quarter report.

The benchmark price, a custom measure used by the real estate board which excludes some properties, showed the price of a home on that measure increased 31 per cent from a year earlier in August to $933,100.

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