Chinese Cash-Bearing Buyers Drive U.S. Foreign Sales Jump
By John Gittelsohn Jul 9, 2014 10:47 AM ET 112
Chinese Cash Buyers Boost U.S. Property
Henry Nunez, a real estate agent in Arcadia, California, met with so many homebuyers from China that he bought a Mandarin-English translation app for his phone.
The $1.99 purchase paid off last month, when he sold a five-bedroom home with crystal chandeliers, marble floors and two kitchens, one designed for smoky wok cooking. The buyers were a Chinese couple who paid $3.5 million in cash.
“Last year, it would’ve been $2.8 million,” said Nunez, a property broker for 27 years in the city 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Los Angeles. “The biggest driver is a lot of people wanting to invest their money here.”
Buyers from Greater China, including people from Hong Kong and Taiwan, spent $22 billion on U.S. homes in the year through March, up 72 percent from the same period in 2013 and more than any other nationality, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday in its annual report on foreign home purchases. That’s 24 cents of every dollar spent by international homebuyers, according to the survey of 3,547 real estate agents.
Chinese purchases of U.S. homes are likely to continue increasing as the country’s swelling ranks of affluent consumers seek refuge from pollution and political and economic uncertainty, according to Thilo Hanemann, who tracks cross-border investment for the New York-based Rhodium Group.
“A lot of people are trying to hedge against a generally bearish outlook for the Chinese economy,” Hanemann said in a telephone interview. “Buying real estate overseas has been in the past limited to a relatively small group of wealthy individuals and sometimes government officials. But it’s become a much bigger trend, involving affluent middle-class people.”
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-08/chinese-cash-bearing-buyers-drive-u-s-foreign-sales-jump.html
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