US Real Estate starting to look attractive to overseas investors
No one is really out there talking about the wave of global real estate investors starting to eye the US market. Google "global real estate investors" and search through the news and blogs... there's no news about the wall of investment money ready to wash ashore into prime real estate markets in the US. It's a contrarian's dream - the media talks about how the subprime crisis is dragging down the US housing market, but just like in the San Francisco Bay Area, the US market is also somewhat bifurcated. Housing stock in the poorer neighborhoods of cities are impacted by subprime related foreclosures, but much of the market is still chugging along at stagnant appreciation rates.
Here are some reasons why overseas investors think US commercial and residential real estate is attractive:
1) Transactions in the US are less risky than in closed, opaque real estate markets like China:
- The United States has the most transparent and liquid real estate market - Cushman Wakefield
- CB Richard Ellis predicts global real estate set to soar
- Global real estate transactions hit $600 billion (up 150% over 2004) - July 23, MENAFN Arab News
- NAR research report on foreign direct investment in US real estate, 2006
- Dollar is crashing making US real estate cheap in the eyes of Europeans and Asians
- New York falls to 27th most expensive city in the world - Jan. 2006, Money CNN - and this is before the dollar crashed 15% vis-a-vis the Euro between January 2006 and today.
- Interest rates have been heading lower once again in anticipation that the subprime crisis will impact the US housing markets -
Related articles:
Overseas real estate investors on the beachhead?
Technorati Tags: global real estate, real estate investment, global markets
Supposedly there's a lot of German Euros in the San Francisco commercial market right now. Premier cities like SF will forever hold their value. When it's cheap for us, we buy. When it's cheap for them, they buy. I look forward to strong dollar times when we can go back to Europe and shop for villas again.
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I was wondering when someone was going to start to talk about this. We are already starting to see a big increase in our traffic from overseas. As the US dollar drops, I am sure more foreign money will come into U.S. real estate.
Jake
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