l*****k
发帖数: 1059 | 1 http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021013488_chin
China’s wealthy paying cash for Eastside luxury homes
Eastside real-estate brokers say they’ve noticed a wave of affluent
mainland-Chinese buyers for luxury homes in Medina, Clyde Hill and other
millionaire rows in West Bellevue. Data and public records show they’re
right. It’s part of a cash-buyer phenomenon sweeping the home market.
By Sanjay Bhatt
Seattle Times business reporter
Real-estate agent Joseph Ho climbed the gilded staircase of a Hunts Point
mansion listed for almost $5 million, shooting video on his iPad and
narrating in Chinese.
Buyers from China have inquired about the 5,540-square-foot house. Ho made
sure to capture a blue-sky fresco in the formal dining room — “It’ll
remind them of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas” — and a yacht-ready dock on
Cozy Cove.
“Water features are important for Chinese feng shui,” Ho said. “When you
have 1.4 billion Chinese, many of whom are millionaires, somebody will
like it.”
China’s superrich, who have historically been drawn to San Francisco, Los
Angeles and Vancouver, B.C., are investing in Seattle-area real estate in
growing numbers, buying multimillion-dollar homes, rent-producing properties
and land for commercial development.
In the process, they are accelerating the real-estate market’s recovery,
sometimes edging out other buyers with all-cash offers, and deepening ties
between Seattle and China.
While exact numbers are hard to obtain, local real-estate agents, bankers
and China experts say there’s been a definite increase over the past year
of rich Chinese nationals shopping for homes here, mostly on the Eastside.
Citi Private Bank, for instance, reports it’s seen about a 30 percent
increase over the past 12 months in the volume of mortgages involving buyers
from Asia in the Seattle area.
The buyers have several motives: Some want a safe place to invest and
diversify their fortunes. Others want their children to start school or
university studies here. And some want to launch businesses here.
There are at least a few who are buying property without setting foot on it.
“We’ve had several projects come in here where the person purchasing from
China bought it without ever seeing the property,” said Robert Grumbach,
who oversees development for the city of Medina, home to Microsoft Chairman
Bill Gates.
One of Ho’s clients in China bought a Hunts Point mansion last year for
almost $7 million — and decided to tear it down to build a new home.
The client, who thought he could get it built in three months, was shocked
to learn it would take two to three years.
Though some may buy based on just a video, Ho says, it’s more common for
the rich buyer from China to hop on a plane to Seattle as part of a U.S.
tour.
The buyers have cash to spend and are eager to close a deal, said Ho, of
Prudential Northwest Realty Associates in Bellevue.
“They want to negotiate, but if you don’t engage, they’re gone” to San
Francisco, Malibu or other West Coast cities, he said.
Warming up to Seattle
While San Francisco has long been a destination for Chinese investors,
tourists and students, Seattle’s star has been rising.
The Chinese began paying more attention after President Hu Jintao visited in
2006 as part of his first state visit to the United States, said Mark Wen,
president of the Washington State China Chamber of Commerce.
Direct flight service starting in 2008 made traveling from China quicker.
And then former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, the first Chinese-American U.S.
governor, became the first Chinese American to serve as U.S. Commerce
secretary in 2009. Locke became ambassador to China in 2011.
In addition, a recent Chinese romantic comedy, “Finding Mr. Right” — or
titled “Beijing Meets Seattle” in Chinese — is giving Seattle a media
splash in China.
“We’re not the end of the Earth anymore,” said Joe Borich, president of
the Washington State China Relations Council.
Circumstances in China also are driving wealthy Chinese to look abroad.
“It’s only natural that they want to be part of a better environment —
clean water, clean air, less density of people,” said attorney Leo Peng,
who manages the Beijing office of law firm Garvey Schubert Barer.
Moreover, investment opportunities in China are limited. Some wealthy
families also may want to protect their assets by stashing some abroad.
“This is pretty much identical to what happened to Vancouver (British
Columbia) in 1997,” Wen said. That year, the British transferred control of
capitalistic Hong Kong to communist China. “Vancouver became a haven for
people moving money out of Hong Kong.”
Two other recent trends contributed to the current wave of superrich China
buyers coming to the U.S.: The rise of China’s currency against the U.S.
dollar and the run-up in China’s property values that made many
millionaires, said Tom Chang, who oversees the Pacific Northwest for
California-based East-West Bank, the largest Chinese-American bank in the
United States.
In 2011, China had more than 1.4 million millionaires, ranking it
third globally, and 648 households with more than $100 million in
wealth, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group.
Some of these Chinese investors are obtaining investor visas from Canada and
the United States that allow them to move their families here in exchange
for investing in job-creating projects. In 2012, about 80 percent of such
investor visas issued by the U.S. government were to Chinese nationals.
To be sure, buyers from around the globe are shopping for homes in the U.S.
market: International sales totaled $82.5 billion in 2012, up from $66
.4 billion in 2011 and $53.4 billion the year before that,
according to the National Association of Realtors.
Signs of a trend
In King County, a Seattle Times analysis of property-tax payers with foreign
billing addresses found the largest number are from Canada, China (
including Hong Kong) and Japan.
That analysis, covering property-tax records from 2013 and 2007, vastly
understates the true number of international buyers because it doesn’t
capture foreign buyers who have moved here temporarily for work or education
, or those who rely on local property managers to handle their tax payments.
But the data offer one way of seeing the rising interest:
• There are at least 519 owners with Canadian mailing addresses, up 14
percent from 2007.
• While the number of Hong Kong addresses rose 25 percent from 2007 to
50, the number from mainland China doubled to 18, the analysis found.
Recent real-estate transactions are another window into the phenomenon.
At the Olive 8 condominium tower in downtown Seattle, several buyers are
from China, according to the developer’s spokeswoman.
On Mercer Island, former Sonics basketball player Kevin Durant sold his home
in February for more than $2.4 million in cash to a Chinese-American
couple and a Chinese national who plans to visit occasionally, according to
their agent, Marguerite Knutson, a Windermere broker in Seattle.
Knutson spent two months going to open houses on the Eastside before closing
that deal. Time after time, she said, homes were snapped up by Chinese
investors paying all cash.
One rambler in Newport Hills, for which she was the selling agent, was
listed at $440,000 and got 11 offers, ultimately selling for $500,000 in
cash to a buyer from China.
Knutson said that for would-be buyers who require a mortgage, “it’s tough
to compete against people with a bag of cash.”
But for sellers, the demand from investor buyers from China should be
welcome; Knutson estimates it is responsible for “at least half of the
recovery in prices on the Eastside.”
The buyers of Durant’s house are partners with another Chinese national in
building a 400-bed student dorm at Shoreline Community College, Knutson said
. They plan to break ground next year.
Other local real-estate agents also say they’ve noticed the surge in
interest from foreign buyers.
“We’ve had buyers out of China, South America, Europe and Canada,” said
Dean Jones, owner of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty in Seattle.
“Now that the tides have turned, they’re coming off the sidelines,” he
said, “at a time with historically low inventory.”
Chang, the East-West banker, said some of the Canadian buyers here are
Chinese nationals who got visas to Canada but decided Vancouver’s real-
estate market was too pricey.
“We did two seminars (last summer) for tourists, Canadian Chinese, who came
down to look at real estate as an alternative investment,” Chang said. The
prospective buyers toured condos in downtown Bellevue and million-dollar
homes around that city.
International buyers who want to buy homes in the U.S. market can have
trouble getting loans from U.S. banks, experts say, because of cultural
barriers and not having an established credit history here.
Complicating matters, China restricts individuals from taking more than $50,
000 out of the country per year.
Citi Private Bank has helped Asian clients buy real estate in their own name
or through a foreign corporation or through a trust, said Ida Liu, who
oversees the Asian Clients Group in North America.
“Our team in Asia can underwrite the mortgage for a house in the U.S.,”
she said. “It’s really seamless.”
Peng, who lived in Seattle and now practices law in Beijing, said some of
the affluent Chinese nationals buying houses in the U.S. made their money in
real estate and intend to develop apartments, offices and shopping malls
here.
“This is just the beginning of a huge wave of investment,” he said.
Seattle Times computer-assisted reporting specialist Justin Mayo contributed
to this report.
Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or s****[email protected] On Twitter @sbhatt | t*****s
发帖数: 2933 | 2 Old news.
【在 l*****k 的大作中提到】
: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021013488_chin
: China’s wealthy paying cash for Eastside luxury homes
: Eastside real-estate brokers say they’ve noticed a wave of affluent
: mainland-Chinese buyers for luxury homes in Medina, Clyde Hill and other
: millionaire rows in West Bellevue. Data and public records show they’re
: right. It’s part of a cash-buyer phenomenon sweeping the home market.
: By Sanjay Bhatt
: Seattle Times business reporter
: Real-estate agent Joseph Ho climbed the gilded staircase of a Hunts Point
: mansion listed for almost $5 million, shooting video on his iPad and
| H**********s
发帖数: 1252 | 3 电影宣传很有用嘛
【在 l*****k 的大作中提到】
: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021013488_chin
: China’s wealthy paying cash for Eastside luxury homes
: Eastside real-estate brokers say they’ve noticed a wave of affluent
: mainland-Chinese buyers for luxury homes in Medina, Clyde Hill and other
: millionaire rows in West Bellevue. Data and public records show they’re
: right. It’s part of a cash-buyer phenomenon sweeping the home market.
: By Sanjay Bhatt
: Seattle Times business reporter
: Real-estate agent Joseph Ho climbed the gilded staircase of a Hunts Point
: mansion listed for almost $5 million, shooting video on his iPad and
| l*****k
发帖数: 1059 | 4 Not chinatown.
【在 t*****s 的大作中提到】
: Old news.
| l*****k
发帖数: 1059 | 5 一部电影就把西雅图从二流华人聚集城市提升到了一流半。
【在 H**********s 的大作中提到】
: 电影宣传很有用嘛
| t*****s
发帖数: 2933 | 6 Chinatown 那个帖子，一看就是醋溜溜的，酸葡萄贴。
【在 l*****k 的大作中提到】
: Not chinatown.
| p*****m
发帖数: 303 | 7 你快去带客户看房子吧，在这里吐酸水是没有前途的。。。
【在 t*****s 的大作中提到】
: Chinatown 那个帖子，一看就是醋溜溜的，酸葡萄贴。
| H**********s
发帖数: 1252 | 8 是agent？
【在 p*****m 的大作中提到】
: 你快去带客户看房子吧，在这里吐酸水是没有前途的。。。
| t*****s
发帖数: 2933 | 9 信口雌黄的人，还当真?
【在 H**********s 的大作中提到】
: 是agent？
| m*******n
发帖数: 5103 | 10 这篇新闻的口气相当正面，好像是说中国买房团有助于振兴本地经济？
我个温哥华的朋友说：九七前后，香港人热炒温哥华，当时温哥华媒体曾出现 "yellow
peril" 的字眼。2000 年中期开始，大陆人把温哥华又炒了一番。现在温哥华的房价
与当地经济环境或薪资水准已经脱节，年轻人想靠份薪水买房越来越难。
西雅图比 LAX, SFO 这种地方有个先天不足之处：地方小，人口少，房子少，禁不起买
房团的摧残，三炒两炒就会炒翻天。
希望我只是杞人忧天。 | | | m*******n
发帖数: 5103 | 11 我不相信那部电影会产生什么作用，买房、移民、读书乃大事也，岂能受一部电影的左
右？（那部电影卖座么？）
不过时间上的巧合倒是真的。
【在 H**********s 的大作中提到】
: 电影宣传很有用嘛
| p*****m
发帖数: 303 | 12 底特律也是这么想的。。。
yellow
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: 这篇新闻的口气相当正面，好像是说中国买房团有助于振兴本地经济？
: 我个温哥华的朋友说：九七前后，香港人热炒温哥华，当时温哥华媒体曾出现 "yellow
: peril" 的字眼。2000 年中期开始，大陆人把温哥华又炒了一番。现在温哥华的房价
: 与当地经济环境或薪资水准已经脱节，年轻人想靠份薪水买房越来越难。
: 西雅图比 LAX, SFO 这种地方有个先天不足之处：地方小，人口少，房子少，禁不起买
: 房团的摧残，三炒两炒就会炒翻天。
: 希望我只是杞人忧天。
| t*****s
发帖数: 2933 | 13 97香港回归，港人大移民，温哥华房价大涨。这次不同，美国移民没有放开，西雅图不
可能成为第二个温哥华。不过，现在很多温哥华的华人跑到西雅图买房。
yellow
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: 这篇新闻的口气相当正面，好像是说中国买房团有助于振兴本地经济？
: 我个温哥华的朋友说：九七前后，香港人热炒温哥华，当时温哥华媒体曾出现 "yellow
: peril" 的字眼。2000 年中期开始，大陆人把温哥华又炒了一番。现在温哥华的房价
: 与当地经济环境或薪资水准已经脱节，年轻人想靠份薪水买房越来越难。
: 西雅图比 LAX, SFO 这种地方有个先天不足之处：地方小，人口少，房子少，禁不起买
: 房团的摧残，三炒两炒就会炒翻天。
: 希望我只是杞人忧天。
| m*******n
发帖数: 5103 | 14 No，跟移民没关系，现在来买房的人不见得都是移民的！！！这才可怕！
【在 t*****s 的大作中提到】
: 97香港回归，港人大移民，温哥华房价大涨。这次不同，美国移民没有放开，西雅图不
: 可能成为第二个温哥华。不过，现在很多温哥华的华人跑到西雅图买房。
:
: yellow
| m****c
发帖数: 252 | 15 不知道你们看那篇文章后面的评论。。。。
真可怕啊。。 | m*******n
发帖数: 5103 | 16 给个链接？
【在 m****c 的大作中提到】
: 不知道你们看那篇文章后面的评论。。。。
: 真可怕啊。。
| v*******o
发帖数: 3052 | 17 嗯，而且现在移民太容易了，有钱木钱都能移
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: No，跟移民没关系，现在来买房的人不见得都是移民的！！！这才可怕！
| v*******o
发帖数: 3052 | 18 点击comments
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: 给个链接？
| l*****k
发帖数: 1059 | 19 国内搞房产实名登记，有房就等于财产公开。聪明的房叔房姐们已经出手变现。
这么多现金总得有地方去是吧。
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: No，跟移民没关系，现在来买房的人不见得都是移民的！！！这才可怕！
| l*****k
发帖数: 1059 | 20 房价高对有房的当然是受益者。至于会不会有泡沫，泡沫什么时候
破，以及刚毕业的小年轻们是不是买得起房，绝大部分人并不在乎。
yellow
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: 这篇新闻的口气相当正面，好像是说中国买房团有助于振兴本地经济？
: 我个温哥华的朋友说：九七前后，香港人热炒温哥华，当时温哥华媒体曾出现 "yellow
: peril" 的字眼。2000 年中期开始，大陆人把温哥华又炒了一番。现在温哥华的房价
: 与当地经济环境或薪资水准已经脱节，年轻人想靠份薪水买房越来越难。
: 西雅图比 LAX, SFO 这种地方有个先天不足之处：地方小，人口少，房子少，禁不起买
: 房团的摧残，三炒两炒就会炒翻天。
: 希望我只是杞人忧天。
| | | H**********s
发帖数: 1252 | 21 国内房价也没见跌。。。
【在 l*****k 的大作中提到】
: 国内搞房产实名登记，有房就等于财产公开。聪明的房叔房姐们已经出手变现。
: 这么多现金总得有地方去是吧。
| l*****k
发帖数: 1059 | 22 领导都走了才跌呢。
【在 H**********s 的大作中提到】
: 国内房价也没见跌。。。
| g*******s
发帖数: 121 | 23 There is one of comments as follows:
Chinese from China has no respect to nature, they will cut tress, even pull
down walls for Fung Shui reason, they are super selfish. Of course, it is
great for realtors, but watch out. I've experience a couple from China
purchases 6 properties for rentals, but live like a pig. These rich Chinese
will destroy our property market like Vancouver BC.
【在 m****c 的大作中提到】
: 不知道你们看那篇文章后面的评论。。。。
: 真可怕啊。。
| H**********s
发帖数: 1252 | 24 comments的口音象老印
pull
Chinese
【在 g*******s 的大作中提到】
: There is one of comments as follows:
: Chinese from China has no respect to nature, they will cut tress, even pull
: down walls for Fung Shui reason, they are super selfish. Of course, it is
: great for realtors, but watch out. I've experience a couple from China
: purchases 6 properties for rentals, but live like a pig. These rich Chinese
: will destroy our property market like Vancouver BC.
| q******n
发帖数: 4479 | 25 有两点说得对，喜欢砍树和抬高房价。
pull
Chinese
【在 g*******s 的大作中提到】
: There is one of comments as follows:
: Chinese from China has no respect to nature, they will cut tress, even pull
: down walls for Fung Shui reason, they are super selfish. Of course, it is
: great for realtors, but watch out. I've experience a couple from China
: purchases 6 properties for rentals, but live like a pig. These rich Chinese
: will destroy our property market like Vancouver BC.
| m*******n
发帖数: 5103 | 26 recycle 的观念与习惯与年纪成反比
pull
Chinese
【在 g*******s 的大作中提到】
: There is one of comments as follows:
: Chinese from China has no respect to nature, they will cut tress, even pull
: down walls for Fung Shui reason, they are super selfish. Of course, it is
: great for realtors, but watch out. I've experience a couple from China
: purchases 6 properties for rentals, but live like a pig. These rich Chinese
: will destroy our property market like Vancouver BC.
| y**j
发帖数: 949 | 27 砍树对，抬高房价不对。。。
老犹占领了merser island咋不说。
98004 十多年前是棒子入侵，再之前是小日本。
【在 q******n 的大作中提到】
: 有两点说得对，喜欢砍树和抬高房价。
:
: pull
: Chinese
| y**j
发帖数: 949 | 28 不对，除了喜欢用塑料袋，老中recycle挺好的。
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: recycle 的观念与习惯与年纪成反比
:
: pull
: Chinese
| v*******o
发帖数: 3052 | 29 不明白除了sfo和lax，纽约芝加哥休斯顿达拉斯都是华人更集中历史更悠久的地区，没
听说过那些地方有炒房团，为啥单挑西海岸？太平洋都垮了还怕这点距离？
yellow
【在 m*******n 的大作中提到】
: 这篇新闻的口气相当正面，好像是说中国买房团有助于振兴本地经济？
: 我个温哥华的朋友说：九七前后，香港人热炒温哥华，当时温哥华媒体曾出现 "yellow
: peril" 的字眼。2000 年中期开始，大陆人把温哥华又炒了一番。现在温哥华的房价
: 与当地经济环境或薪资水准已经脱节，年轻人想靠份薪水买房越来越难。
: 西雅图比 LAX, SFO 这种地方有个先天不足之处：地方小，人口少，房子少，禁不起买
: 房团的摧残，三炒两炒就会炒翻天。
: 希望我只是杞人忧天。
| i*****g
发帖数: 6926 | |
|
