This is my experience in BC we have foreign owned homes and owner moves back to China leaving house empty or only a single basement suite occupied to have hydro/gas still being billed at the residence. Two of my friends are suite renters in this type of situation. The one hasn’t seen the landlord/family in 2 years, so you have a 3500 sqft home empty, causing upward pressure on the housing. I went to rent a house once and Chinese owner and their agent were in town so we did a tour and negotiation. We mentioned the place smelled a bit they said it was rented before but tenant moved out, and has been empty for 6 months because they live in China, so no airflow. When we talked about deposit and cheques and notice to end lease etc. The owner was like, try it out, if you don’t think it suits you just move out and we will ignore terminarion of lease issues. The whole vibe was "we don’t even care if it is rented, but we have to make a half assed effort to look like we are trying to tenant it. " It was listed well below market rent and empty, so they weren’t in any hurry to get rent cheques or have it occupied. This may not be all across Canada, but it is definitely a problem in BC. One townhouse we rented the strata could not actually discerne who even owned the house, when the were digging for info for a conflict it was looking like a shell company purchasing realestate posing as individuals overseas.