Ontario Housing Minister Peter Milczyn says he doesn’t know how many homebuyers have been financially imperilled by the plunge in the Toronto real estate market following the introduction of the foreign buyers tax last April.“I’m not aware this is a massive problem,” he said on Thursday.Milczyn, who wasn’t in the housing portfolio at the time, said Queen’s Park would have done a broad analysis of the potential fallout from the tax, part of its Fair Housing Plan, which succeeded in cooling the region’s white-hot housing market.“But as far as I know, (the government) didn’t drill down into calculating a number of individuals who might be impacted,” he said.Read more: They bought their prebuilt homes at the market’s peak. Now they face financial ruinPrice drop crushes pre-construction home buyers’ dreamsGTA home sales down 40 per cent in March compared to last year, report showsMilczyn was among those who expressed sympathy but offered no assistance Thursday to a group of Oakville homebuyers who say they are part of a much larger cohort of purchasers, caught during an extraordinary real estate cycle. They say they are on the brink of not being able to close on their pre-construction home purchases and fear they will be forced to forfeit hundreds of thousands of dollars in deposits.They also worry that if they don’t close, they will be sued by the builder.The buyers say the drop in the region’s real estate sales devalued their existing homes far below what they expected when they bought in Mattamy Homes’ Preserve development in February 2017. There are at least 100 other buyers suffering similar distress, said three couples who were interviewed by the Star.In addition to declining property values, their dilemma has been compounded by new mortgage stress tests that took effect nationally in January, qualifying them for smaller loans than they would have been able to access a yea ...
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