Buying land as a non resident

Hi everyone, I have been living in Canada with my family for the past 3 years on an employer sponsored Work permit. We are working towards obtaining our PR.

My wife is an architect and we are planning on building our own house, however I know that non residents need to pay 25% NRST in order to obtain property.

I was looking at the specific law and it says that the tax applies only to "designated land" and then it proceeds to define what that designated land is, essentially if it has a home, the tax applies.

However I want to buy a vacant lot, which has no home or structure, and then build the house with a bulder.

Do we pay that tax when we purchase the lot? Or how would that work? I went through all of the NRST and the Federal tax and nothing specifies anything about buying land.

Is it encouraged to buy land and build houses because of the need for new houses and that's why the NRST doesn't apply? Am I missing something?