BC Foreign Buyer Additional PTT — Specified Areas
Also known as: Specified areas · Additional PTT regions
BC charges a 20% additional property transfer tax on foreign buyers in five regional districts and nowhere else in the province. Those five are Metro Vancouver, the Capital Regional District, the Fraser Valley, Nanaimo and the Central Okanagan. The federal ban on non-Canadian buyers is a separate question with a different map.
The BC Foreign Buyer Additional PTT (20% on top of the general PTT) applies in 5 specified regional districts: (1) Metro Vancouver Regional District (covering Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, North/West Vancouver, Delta, Langley, Maple Ridge, etc.); (2) Capital Regional District (Greater Victoria, Saanich, Sidney, Sooke, etc.); (3) Fraser Valley Regional District (Abbotsford, Mission, Chilliwack, Hope, etc.); (4) Regional District of Nanaimo; (5) Regional District of Central Okanagan (Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country, etc.).
The list expanded geographically Feb 21, 2018 from Metro Vancouver only to the current 5 regions. A buyer outside those five regions does not pay the additional property transfer tax at all, though the federal Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act can still reach them. It runs on a different map, covering Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, which between them take in most BC urban centres and many smaller ones. The two questions are separate, and a real estate lawyer should answer both before an offer goes in.
Related terms
- BC Foreign Buyer Additional PTT — A 20% additional property transfer tax on residential purchases by foreign nationals, foreign corporations and taxable trustees.
- Federal Foreign Buyer Ban — Federal legislation prohibiting most non-Canadians from purchasing residential property in Census Metropolitan Areas, in force through January 1, 2027.
- Property Transfer Tax — A provincial tax payable to the Province of British Columbia on the registered fair market value of any residential property title transfer, calculated using marginal-rate brackets.
See also
Use any of these formats. Codex content is licensed under CC BY 4.0 — attribution required.
@misc{bronsonjob-bc_foreign_buyer_specified_areas,
author = {Job, Bronson},
title = {{BC specified areas for Foreign Buyer Additional PTT}},
howpublished = {BC Real Estate Codex},
year = {2018},
url = {https://www.bronsonjob.com/codex#bc.foreign_buyer_specified_areas},
urldate = {2026-09-05},
note = {Fact ID: bc.foreign_buyer_specified_areas, version 1.}
}Job, B. (2018). BC specified areas for Foreign Buyer Additional PTT. *BC Real Estate Codex*. Retrieved 2026-09-05, from https://www.bronsonjob.com/codex#bc.foreign_buyer_specified_areas
BC specified areas for Foreign Buyer Additional PTT — Bronson Job PREC, BC Real Estate Codex (2026-09-05). https://www.bronsonjob.com/codex#bc.foreign_buyer_specified_areas
Fact id: bc.foreign_buyer_specified_areas · v1 · machine-readable: /api/v1/facts/by-id/bc.foreign_buyer_specified_areas.json
Verified sources (1)· re-verified 2026-09-05Click to expand
Every claim on this page is sourced to a primary government, regulator, or industry-association URL. We re-verify quarterly; the verification dates below show when each source was last confirmed against the live government page.
- BC Governmentretrieved 2026-09-05Additional Property Transfer Tax — Specified Areashttps://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/property-taxes/property-transfer-tax/additional-property-transfer-tax
bc.foreign_buyer_specified_areas · v1View in Codex →License: This definition is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Cite as: "BC Foreign Buyer Additional PTT — Specified Areas", BC Real Estate Glossary by Bronson Job, https://www.bronsonjob.com/glossary/foreign-buyer-specified-areas.
