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“The topic of foreign investors has dominated the conversation in Vancouver,” Kurl said, adding that it has become a greater concern in Toronto since 2015.

Housing is a much greater issue in Toronto than it was three years ago

But John Andrew, a professor at Queen’s University, said that there is a difference between perception and reality, and it’s likely that Toronto citizens who are frustrated by high housing prices are just looking for a scapegoat.

“The percentage of foreign buyers in Toronto was never very high,” he said, “Overall, it was never more than five per cent, and now that number has dropped to two and a half per cent.”

Last year, following British Columbia’s lead, Ontario introduced a plan to cool the housing market in and around Toronto, which included a 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers. The tax did lower housing prices, but the market recovered because this issue was never a significant factor, Andrew said.

“If people think foreign buyers are the cause of high housing prices (in Toronto), they’re dead wrong,” he said.

But the foreign buyers tax did a better job at reducing prices in Vancouver, Andrew said. “That happened for two reasons. One because prices had risen more dramatically in Vancouver, and two because there was a higher percentage of foreign investment.”

Photo by Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press

This dramatic rise in prices could explain why almost two-thirds of Vancouverites want the market to crash, with 36 per cent of respondents wanting prices to fall by 30 per cent or more and another 26 per cent hoping they will fall by 10 per cent. Slightly more than half of Torontonians also want to see prices go down, with about a quarter hoping to see a drop of 30 per cent.