Since President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs against virtually every U.S. trading partner in early April, the U.S. housing market has experienced a drop in demand from its largest cohort of international homebuyers — Canadians.
Buying $5.9 billion worth of U.S. real estate in 2024, Canadians comprised 13% of foreign buyers in 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors. Chinese buyers represented the second-largest cohort of foreign homebuyers at 11%, though the overall dollar volume of sales to Chinese buyers last year was larger at approximately $7.5 billion.
A sharp decline in searches for homes for sale or rent in the U.S. by people based in Canada is motivated in part by Trump’s adversarial pivot toward their country, a new Redfin analysis suggests.
Significant declines in Canadian searches for homes in the U.S. began immediately after Trump’s inauguration, with 21.3% fewer searches year over year in February and 24.6% fewer searches in March.
Throughout this period, the president also repeatedly pitched the idea of making Canada the “51st state.” Survey results published in January by the Angus Reid Institute, a nonprofit Canadian market research firm, found 90% of Canadians opposed 51st statehood.
Trump’s April tariff announcement accelerated the decline in Canadian searches for U.S. homes, per Redfin data, with 34.2% fewer searches in April, 26.4% fewer searches in May and 25.4% fewer searches in June.
Redfin’s report also notes that the Canadian dollar weakened against the U.S. dollar at the beginning of 2025, making U.S. real estate more expensive for Canadian buyers. The exchange rate for the Canadian dollar reached a three-year low on Jan. 30 at $0.68 to the U.S. dollar, but had climbed to $0.73 on the U.S. dollar by July 22.
Cheryl Van Elsis, a Las Vegas-based Redfin premier agent quoted in the report, said one of her clients has been selling off properties to reduce his U.S. exposure.
“He used to own four homes in the Las Vegas area, which he mainly rented to fellow Canadians here for casinos or poker events. But now, he no longer wants ties to the U.S.,” said Van Elsis.
The decline in interest from Canadian buyers has been widespread, with Canadian searches for U.S. homes falling in 46 of the 50 largest U.S. metros. But second-home markets in Florida and California typically popular with so-called Canadian “snowbirds” have seen the largest drops as of August.
West Palm Beach, Fla., saw the largest decline, with a 26.6% year-over-year drop last month, followed by Anaheim, Calif. (26% dip), Columbus, Ohio (25.6%), Detroit (25.5%) and Los Angeles (25.5%). The Florida cities of Tampa and Orlando also made the top 10 list of U.S. metros with the largest annual declines in Canadian home searches, falling 23.1% and 23% in August, respectively.
