Why San Francisco continues to draw Chinese home buyers

The Californian city now luring a different kind of Chinese home buyer

The Chinese property seeker is still enamoured with the San Francisco Bay Area property market, albeit in lower pricing tiers, according to Xinhua.

While Chinese buyers have traditionally bought high-end homes in cash in the Californian city, these days they are wont to target more affordable units, the state-run media agency reports, citing stateside Chinese realtors.

“Traditionally, wealthy people, such as corporate executives, come here to invest in expensive properties; these days we see more parents buying homes for their children who study or work here,” US-based realtor Bei Qin told Xinhua on Sunday.

The emergence of middle-class Chinese property seekers is consistent with National Association of Realtors (NAR) data showing that the median price of a US home sold to a Chinese buyer stood at USD439,000 in 2018, down from USD530,000 in 2017.

“In the past we had two out of 10 clients from China; now only one out of 20 is from China,” Qin said.

Still, the popularity of Bay Area is not about to ebb dramatically among Chinese home buyers, according to Kangni Yuan, regional sales manager of ACE Capital Group, a real estate firm in San Mateo County.

“Several factors play a role, such as the economic growth in the state, the good weather, the convenient air transportation and the large concentration of Chinese communities,” she told Xinhua.