中文
Wealthy Chinese with a few million yuan to burn will spend billions on U.S. real estate in the years ahead, according to a report released Wednesday by CB Richard Ellis, a large global real estate firm. The United States is the country of choice for China buyers. Canada and Australia come in next at No. 2 and No. 3 respectively. That rich Chinese individuals and savvy corporations are buying up real estate in world class cities is no surprise at this point. News of new Chinese real estate deals are popping up every quarter. Similar moves happened with the Japanese back in the 1980s. Now its China’s turn. And by most estimates, they are snatching up high end real estate in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, in particular. In California, China is the third largest foreign buyer of real estate, following Mexico and people from the Philippines, according to Realtor.org. In New York, the Chinese are second only to wealthy people from the Dominican Republican. Across the country, however, Chinese purchasers bought over $10 billion of U.S. real estate in 2011 and account for 9% of foreign U.S. house buyers, second only to Canadians, according to Juwai.com, a Chinese real estate website geared towards international home shoppers. By comparison, and across the 50 states, the Chinese buy more U.S. homes than Indians, Mexicans or the British. While Mexicans are big in California and all across the south, China still ranks within the top five foreign nationalities buying real estate in 44 states. China, for instance, is ahead of Mexican buyers throughout the more costly Northeast. They already are the number one foreign buyer group in states like West Virginia and Massachusetts. They are number two in New York, Maine, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming and Hawaii. Read More
SHANGHAI—The upswing in the U.S. property market is attracting Chinese developers and investment firms, and they are dipping their toes into new cities.
While Chinese institutional investors are still drawn to their traditional favorites of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, many are now also headed to cities such as Houston, Boston and Seattle as they seek geographic diversity as well as bigger lot sizes.
These other cities—lesser known to some Chinese firms—now appear to offer fresh opportunities as energy or technology drives their economies and local Chinese communities expand.
In the second quarter of this year, Beijing-based real-estate investment firm Grand China Fund took an 80% stake in a 286-unit residential rental complex in Houston. That followed a 2012 investment in a 170-unit residential project in Atlanta, with another local partner. The firm put a total of about $15 million into the two projects, which are valued at more than $50 million. For both projects, it said it was attracted by the prospect of higher yields amid the lower prices compared with property in California and New York. Read More