Chinese buyers retreat from US residential market

Stateside investments rerouted to alternative destinations

Sales of residential properties in the US to Chinese buyers dropped four percent year-on-year in 2018, according to Juwai.com.

Due to a double whammy of the US-China trade skirmish and China’s controls on capital flight, Chinese buyer enquiries for US property have been down in four of the five last quarters, CNBC reported.

“Some Chinese buyers are holding back from residential real estate in the US because of the trade war,” Law was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.

“Events in the trade war have been unpredictable. They worry that after buying US property, they might later have problems with their visa or other issues that make it hard for them to keep that property.”

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The worsening trade relationship between China and the US may cause Chinese investors to shift their presence into other key markets like Australia, Japan, and the UK, Knight Frank reported.

Chinese investments have been up in Canada, along with the aforementioned, as alternative destinations to the US, Law told CNBC.

Furthermore, buyer enquiries for stateside homes from the Chinese dropped 27.5 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019, Juwai.com data showed. All foreign spend on stateside residential properties sank 25 percent in 2018.