Foreign Investors From China Buying US Real Estate

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**WarOne**

The American Dream for Non-Americans

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/08/real_estate/home-sales-to-chinese/index.html?iid=HP_LN

The U.S. housing recovery is still going and international buyers are giving a huge boost, with the Chinese leading the charge.

Chinese buying was up more than 70% to $22 billion -- nearly 1 in 4 dollars of all foreign purchases, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Canadians are actually No. 1 in terms of total homes bought, but the Chinese buy much more expensive homes: An average price of $591,000.

The Chinese also bring a lot of cash to the table: More than three-quarters of their purchases were all-cash buys.

California is the biggest market for the Chinese, accounting for a third of their purchases.

Washington State, however, is coming up quickly, accounting for 9% of buys. It's followed by New York, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Related: Top 10 cities for Chinese homebuyers

Why are they buying? Only 39% of Chinese buyers said they intended to use their purchases as their main home.

Some may buy condos for their children attending U.S. colleges. They hope that, in addition to saving on dormitory fees, they can make benefit from home price appreciation by the time the students graduate.

Others are becoming landlords, buying cheap homes in distressed economic pockets, like Detroit, and renting them out.

Still others use the homes as vacation properties a couple of weeks a year and rent them out the rest of the time.

In addition to the tide of Chinese buyers and the Canadians, those from Mexico, India and the United Kingdom filled out the top five list. India also had a notable jump in money spent -- 48% growth.

**sebster**

Just to clarify, foreign purchases were about 7% of the total purchases. So the Chinese element is a quarter of that 7%, or 1.75%.

The other thing to point out is that foreign buyers includes both foreign citizens with permanent residence in the US, and also foreign citizens who continue to live overseas (who are buying as an investment or as a vacation home). It's a roughly 50/50 split between those two groups, but I don't know if there are any figures that split each nationality (Canadians would be almost entirely people who've moved to the US, while Chinese buyers would mostly be investors, I would think).

Anyhow, the full report is here;
http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2014/07/08/13/10/18mIIW.So.56.pdf

The only comment I'd make is that the US citizens and companies own very large holdings in the rest of the world, that's just how free trade works - we can buy your land and you can buy ours. The only real issue is that China and a couple of other don't actually let foreign investors buy up their land. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.

**whembly**

Why is this a bad thing?

The $$$ used to purchase these assets came from China into the US.

**Jihadin**

There was an uproar about this during Reagan admin if I remember correctly. Though it was the Japanese doing it. I cannot remember the law that was passed to prevent Japan from acquiring any firms, land, building, and/or housing connected to the US Government

**LordofHats**

I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords.

**Breotan**

I thought the British owned a larger chunk of the US real estate market?

**Tibbsy**

Breotan wrote:
I thought the British owned a larger chunk of the US real estate market?

Well we did once own the entire US...

**Jihadin**

At that time about 13 states

**Ensis Ferrae**

Tibbsy wrote:

Well we did once own the entire US...

You owned the majority of the Eastern seaboard... to probably a couple hundred miles inland... not the "Entire US" (as you didn't colonize the West Coast

)

Edit: needed to throw in an obligatory 'Murica!

**Dreadclaw69**

sebster wrote:
Just to clarify, foreign purchases were about 7% of the total purchases. So the Chinese element is a quarter of that 7%, or 1.75%.

The other thing to point out is that foreign buyers includes both foreign citizens with permanent residence in the US, and also foreign citizens who continue to live overseas (who are buying as an investment or as a vacation home). It's a roughly 50/50 split between those two groups, but I don't know if there are any figures that split each nationality (Canadians would be almost entirely people who've moved to the US, while Chinese buyers would mostly be investors, I would think).

Anyhow, the full report is here;
http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2014/07/08/13/10/18mIIW.So.56.pdf

The only comment I'd make is that the US citizens and companies own very large holdings in the rest of the world, that's just how free trade works - we can buy your land and you can buy ours. The only real issue is that China and a couple of other don't actually let foreign investors buy up their land. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.

You and your context stopping people from getting irrationally upset

**Grey Templar**

I'd be far more worried about China owning a bunch of our debt then them owning a tiny bit of our real estate.

LordofHats wrote:
I for one welcome our new Chinese landlords.

This seems more appropriate.

**Mr. Burning**

The BBC recently ran an article vis a vis Chinese buyers buying British property.

Sight unseen, even just the promise of a building, sometime, in the next twenty years.

The Chinese are looking at property as an investment.

**Easy E**

This reminds me of the furor over Japanese buying a bunch of US Real Estate back when they were a rising Economic star and everyone was doom mongering the how the Japanese were going to outperform the United States and that we should all be afraid of it happening.

I wonder how that turned out?

Edit= Ninja'd by Jihadin!

**Chongara**

whembly wrote:
Why is this a bad thing?

Can you not READ what people POST? Look at what "THE SEBSTER" wrote a few posts UP about this ISSUE. This MEANS that 1.75% of ALL LAND in the USA is being BOUGHT by CHINA. DO the MATH!!! in just 57 SHORT years CHINA will OWN more THAN 100% of AMERICA and AMERICA and will be CHINA and they will FORCE your CHILDREN to change when they CELEBRATE new years and use up all the FIREWORKS leaving NONE for the FOURTH OF JULY, not that it will MATTER because that is INDEPENDENCE day which won't be ANY MORE because OBAMA gave all our LAND to the CHINESE and forced your CHILDREN to learn COMMUNISM in SCHOOLS pushing the gay AGENDA.

**Jihadin**

Chongara wrote:
whembly wrote:
Why is this a bad thing?

Can you not READ what people POST? Look at what "THE SEBSTER" wrote a few posts UP about this ISSUE. This MEANS that 1.75% of ALL LAND in the USA is being BOUGHT by CHINA. DO the MATH!!! in just 57 SHORT years CHINA will OWN more THAN 100% of AMERICA and AMERICA and will be CHINA and they will FORCE your CHILDREN to change when they CELEBRATE new years and use up all the FIREWORKS leaving NONE for the FOURTH OF JULY, not that it will MATTER because that is INDEPENDENCE day which won't be ANY MORE because OBAMA gave all our LAND to the CHINESE and forced your CHILDREN to learn COMMUNISM in SCHOOLS pushing the gay AGENDA.

Ease back on the caffeine

**Easy E**

Chongara wrote:
whembly wrote:
Why is this a bad thing?

Can you not READ what people POST? Look at what "THE SEBSTER" wrote a few posts UP about this ISSUE. This MEANS that 1.75% of ALL LAND in the USA is being BOUGHT by CHINA. DO the MATH!!! in just 57 SHORT years CHINA will OWN more THAN 100% of AMERICA and AMERICA and will be CHINA and they will FORCE your CHILDREN to change when they CELEBRATE new years and use up all the FIREWORKS leaving NONE for the FOURTH OF JULY, not that it will MATTER because that is INDEPENDENCE day which won't be ANY MORE because OBAMA gave all our LAND to the CHINESE and forced your CHILDREN to learn COMMUNISM in SCHOOLS pushing the gay AGENDA.

Citizen Colbert, is that you?

**whembly**

Chongara wrote:
whembly wrote:
Why is this a bad thing?

Can you not READ what people POST? Look at what "THE SEBSTER" wrote a few posts UP about this ISSUE. This MEANS that 1.75% of ALL LAND in the USA is being BOUGHT by CHINA. DO the MATH!!! in just 57 SHORT years CHINA will OWN more THAN 100% of AMERICA and AMERICA and will be CHINA and they will FORCE your CHILDREN to change when they CELEBRATE new years and use up all the FIREWORKS leaving NONE for the FOURTH OF JULY, not that it will MATTER because that is INDEPENDENCE day which won't be ANY MORE because OBAMA gave all our LAND to the CHINESE and forced your CHILDREN to learn COMMUNISM in SCHOOLS pushing the gay AGENDA.

**sebster**

Grey Templar wrote:
I'd be far more worried about China owning a bunch of our debt then them owning a tiny bit of our real estate.

Chinese ownership of US debt has been pretty massively overstated as well.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mr. Burning wrote:
The BBC recently ran an article vis a vis Chinese buyers buying British property.

Sight unseen, even just the promise of a building, sometime, in the next twenty years.

The Chinese are looking at property as an investment.

And I think this is actually the core of the real issue, in London and other major cities like New York, the Chinese (and other groups with a small but stupidly rich investor class like Saudi Arabia) are buying prime housing, often for ludicrous prices, and then not actually living in them. They buy them as an investment, and as a prestige property, but then they don't live in them, not even for a few days a year. It isn't so much about who buys them, but about the properties lying unused while rents remain high for the remaining properties because of the shortage of housing.