Just wondered what on earth it would have been worth a few years ago if it's only worth £20k now!!

Sounds as though the NS property market is about as mad as ours here - and I thought the UK had the monopoly on crazy price increases but obviously not!

If so, I'll take the £400k profit that we've made on our house in the past 3 years and buy up half of NS!

Good grief! What are rental values like over there?

It'll be some time before it gets near to UK prices!

A holiday rental in the summer rents for around £600/week (yes week!)

A house rental would be around £250-£500 a month. Antigonish much higher because of the University.

I should add that Nova Scotians (no generalization then!) do not seem to appreciate older properties and pay a fortune for brand new.

That New Glasgow one looks to have original maple doors, probably hand-made, hardwood floors and oak panelling. It was probably a bankers or captains house. It may need a new roof but that is just around £1500 here. Furnace is new and it's on mains and sewer. If I had the spare cash...

It really does depend on the area though.
We saw some lovely houses in Annapolis when we started looking 3 years ago, that are still on the market now, despite massive reductions in price. One in particular I loved has dropped from $210k to $150k and still hasn't sold.
Likewise up towards Sheet Harbour, houses we saw there for around $60K are still unsold. On the other hand, the house we bought in Halifax has gone up in value approx $90k in the last 2 years. As the realtors love to say, position, position, position.
Going back to OP question - you have to declare on your Canadian tax form any propery you own overseas if it's value is more than C$100K, whether you rent it out or not.

That is a great link. Thank you. I have shamelessly stolen it and used it as the basis of a short wiki article here outlining the tax implications of renting out a home in the UK whilst being a tax resident in Canada.

This is not quite right. You have to declare specified foreign property with your tax return each year. This will include any income producing assets like a house that you rent out.

You do not need to report personal use property. This would include a house in the UK that you do not rent, but use as a holiday home when you visit.

You might want to consider how you will be able to manage and maintain the property and significantly the tenants whilst you are out of the country. You might be leaving a big financial asset open to abuse in your absence.

There are capital gains tax issues. You need to get your property fair market valued before you leave as you will be laible for canadian capital gains on any gain after you leave when you sell.

Sorry but we were with the tax consultant on Monday, and on the form it specifically states that you have to declare any overseas property valued over $100k regardless of whether you rent it out or not. We have a house in France which we don't rent out as I use it for most of the year, but we still had to declare it for my OH's tax return here in NS. I know it's the first time we've had to do it, so maybe there were changes made during the last financial year.

These are from the instructions on page two of T1135 (my emphasis):

What property do you have to report?

You only have to report property that is specified foreign property.
Specified foreign property includes:
* funds in foreign bank accounts;
* shares of Canadian corporations on deposit with a foreign broker;
* shares of non-resident corporations held by the resident filer or on deposit
with a Canadian or foreign broker;
* land and buildings located outside Canada, such as a foreign rental
property;
* precious metals, gold certificates, and futures held outside Canada;
* interests in mutual funds that are organized in a foreign jurisdiction;
* debts owed by non-resident persons, such as government or corporate
bonds, debentures, mortgages, and notes receivable;
* an interest in or a right to any specified foreign property;
* property that is convertible or that can be exchanged for a right to acquire
specified foreign property;
* an interest in a partnership where the share of income or loss of the
partnership for non-resident members is 90% or more and the partnership
holds specified foreign property;
* an interest in a non-resident trust or a non-resident trust deemed to be
resident by section 94 of the Act (discretionary trust);
* patents, copyrights or trademarks held outside Canada; and
* an interest in, or a right with respect to, an entity that is non-resident.

Specified foreign property does not include:
* property used or held exclusively in the course of carrying on an active
business;
* personal-use property (i.e., property used primarily for personal use and
enjoyment, such as a vacation property used primarily as a personal
residence);
* an interest in a U.S. Individual Retirement Account (IRA);
* shares of the capital stock, or indebtedness, of a non-resident corporation
that is a foreign affiliate;
* an interest in, or indebtedness, of a non-resident trust that is a foreign
affiliate;
* an interest in a non-resident trust that neither you nor a person related to
you had to pay for in any way;
* an interest in a non-resident trust principally providing superannuation,
pension, retirement or employee benefits primarily to non-resident
beneficiaries, that does not pay income tax in the taxing jurisdiction where it
is resident; or
* an interest in, or a right to acquire any of the above-noted excluded foreign
property.

The form is here. This is for Federal tax. Nova Scotia tax rules may be different, but this would surprise me.

christmasoompa

In hindsight we should have kept our UK property when we moved to Canada. I ended up with a 50% bigger mortgage in Canada than when we left the UK. When we sold up after 8 years, our house in Canada it was only worth a third of what our UK house would be now. That's an issue I found buying a cheap house in rural Canada. I actually worked with a Brit who sold his house in the early 2000's at 60% of the build price he paid for it 10 years earlier. If we every returned to Canada I would buy a house in commuting distance of a major city i.e Ottawa/Toronto so not to lose on real estate assets.

I know expats who kept property in the UK for 25 year plus as an investment and safety net. I would keep you UK house and buy a second home in Canada if you can afford to.

Returning to the UK is easy. Managed to get a well paid job with company car, but having to move out of Oxfordshire to Kent to afford a decent sized house again.

hudd