St. John’s, Newfoundland. WIKIPEDIA
SAN FRANCISCO – New Canadians, primarily Filipinos, are “snapping up homes,” giving new life to the slack housing market in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Veteran real estate agent and mortgage broker Debbie Hanlon told CBC News that she sold 22 homes to immigrant families in the past 12 months, mostly to newcomers from the Philippines.
Hanlon said she had never seen anything like it in her 25 years in the real estate industry. There are now reportedly 200 Filipino families in the St. John’s are and the number is growing.
The surge in home-buying is credited to a provincial down payment assistance program set up as a pilot project two years ago for low-income earners, as well as to the arrival of Filipinos as part of the temporary foreign worker program.
The provincial government offers loans at a very low interest, which they don’t have to pay back for the first five years, giving everyone, not just immigrants, the opportunity to become first-time home buyers.
The CBC News report quotes Mauricio Belga and his family, originally from the Philippines, who took ownership of their new home in the east end of St. John’s just over a month ago.
“It’s a blessing to us because, you know, we have a place to stay, and we can call it home,” Belga said.
“We’re very, very happy to have this beautiful house and I think this is a blessing from God and the people who helped us to have this one.”