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How And Why Buyers From China Are Snatching Up Bay Area Homes [20% Of Deals Cash]
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | November 30, 2014 | Kathleen Pender

Posted on 11/30/2014 4:17:17 PM PST by Steelfish

How And Why Buyers From China Are Snatching Up Bay Area Homes By Kathleen Pender November 29, 2014

The Lumina, a luxury condo development taking shape in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, is popular with overseas buyers.

When Linda Vida sold her house in the Oakland hills this summer, she was hoping for a buyer who would live there, put kids in the local schools and “give back or participate in the community,” she says.

However, “as is very typical these days, a woman from China paid all cash for the house, and is not going to live in it but is going to rent it out for a while,” said Vida, who moved to Colorado. The buyer, a professor in Shanghai, paid $1.022 million, $27,000 over the asking price, for the home on Bay Forest Drive.

“In the end, she was the strongest buyer because she didn’t want to negotiate over nickel-and-dime things,” Vida said.

Although the Bay Area has always attracted foreign home buyers, anecdotal evidence suggests that their numbers are growing, creating even more competition in areas where demand has far outstripped the supply of new homes. The boom is partly because of globalization, but mostly a result of the tremendous buildup of wealth in developing countries, especially China, which had 2.4 million millionaires in 2013, up 60 percent from the year before, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

Many of these millionaires want to diversify their assets outside of what is still a communist country, send their kids to U.S. schools or have a place to escape if China’s smog gets even worse. Buyers from China are reluctant to talk about their purchases publicly, but real estate agents say they prefer new or nearly new homes or condos in good school districts with great views

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: bayarea; california; china; sanfrancisco; siliconvalley
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To: BlueStateRightist

We’re just thankful when CA loonies resettle in CO rather than TX.


21 posted on 11/30/2014 6:48:58 PM PST by txrefugee
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To: txrefugee
CA loonies resettle in CO

My idiot niece did exactly that.

Unfortunately, despite the outflow of many like her, Cali gets MORE blue.

22 posted on 11/30/2014 6:51:23 PM PST by nascarnation (Impeach, Convict, Deport)
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To: faithhopecharity

My lawyer considered learning Chinese because there were so many buyers from China. All cash. All over asking.


23 posted on 11/30/2014 7:11:07 PM PST by ladyjane
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To: Age of Reason
And we can go ahead and tell young people that the reason they did everything right ...and yet can’t find a job or buy a house, is because we sent their jobs to China

No, you can tell young people that they wasted their money when they majored in gender studies, black studies, and sociology.

I have a friend whose son majored in petroleum engineering. His starting salary was 125k and they fly him to N. Dakota four days a week in a private plane. Pretty good for a 21 year old kid. Sociology majors do not command that kind of salary.

24 posted on 11/30/2014 7:16:35 PM PST by ladyjane
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To: bboop
I don’t want this to happen to my So Cal home.

My mother-in-law lives in Diamond Bar one lady bought 5 houses one next to hers; it was empty for a while now there are pregnant women living there.

25 posted on 11/30/2014 7:21:42 PM PST by Mike Darancette (AGW-e is the climate "Domino Theory")
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To: ladyjane

Yes. Chinese isn’t an easy language for Americans to learn however. One real estate broker we know was taking lessons ( he flies to China to sell usA houses to buyers in Shanghai and Beijing, cash sales). He suddenly hired a Chinese assists to and never mentioned his lessons again. Now you see him on chinese television just Introducing his assistant - who gives the sales talk for him.


26 posted on 11/30/2014 7:37:33 PM PST by faithhopecharity ((Brilliant, Profound Tag Line Goes Here, just as soon as I can think of one..) c)
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To: goldstategop

Along with the great weather and low property taxes, I believe this is why California property appreciates faster than most other states. There are still a lot of great deals on homes with land here.

In 1961 a person I know bought a small house with a ocean view for 29k. He kept it and today it is worth over a million.


27 posted on 11/30/2014 8:58:49 PM PST by CalTexan
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To: Age of Reason

+1


28 posted on 11/30/2014 9:56:42 PM PST by Pelham (Lawbreaking foreigners get rewarded with amnesty. Laws are for suckers.)
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To: Mike Darancette

“My mother-in-law lives in Diamond Bar one lady bought 5 houses one next to hers; it was empty for a while now there are pregnant women living there.”

That’s a “birth hotel”! Those Chinese women fly here when they are pregnant so that their kids will have American citizenship. These “hotels” have been showing up all over the LA basin.

We are run by idiots and traitors. The leaders of any other country would have ended birthright citizenship decades ago when this abuse first cropped up.

Of course when “conservative” Hugh Hewitt was confronted with this weeks ago on his program his reply was “I’m all for birthright citizenship”. As I said idiots and traitors.


29 posted on 11/30/2014 10:04:30 PM PST by Pelham (Lawbreaking foreigners get rewarded with amnesty. Laws are for suckers.)
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To: Steelfish
However, “as is very typical these days, a woman from China paid all cash for the house, and is not going to live in it but is going to rent it out for a while,”

If you think million dollar prices are crazy for SF Bay Area homes, the rental prices are sky high as well, driven by home prices. My son-in-law has family visiting from several areas of the country. His sister rented a home last week on the peninsula rather than stay in hotels. Rent of the home is more than $10,000 a month. She can afford it, regular folks are stressed just trying to pay $4,500 a month for ordinary tiny homes.

30 posted on 12/01/2014 12:07:52 AM PST by roadcat
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To: Mike Darancette

Really? My friend is in La Canada. She says it’s happening there, too. Huge expensive homes bought as rentals. The pregnant women are living there for ‘birth citizenship’ are they not?


31 posted on 12/03/2014 6:33:38 AM PST by bboop (does not suffer fools gladly)
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To: ladyjane
you can tell young people that they wasted their money when they majored in gender studies, black studies, and sociology.

I have a friend whose son majored in petroleum engineering. His starting salary was 125k and they fly him to N. Dakota four days a week in a private plane. Pretty good for a 21 year old kid. Sociology majors do not command that kind of salary.

How much money would petroleum engineers command if every kid who goes to college to majored in petroleum engineering?

32 posted on 12/06/2014 9:19:31 PM PST by Age of Reason
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To: Age of Reason

You have a point. They would earn much less.

However, most kids in college avoid courses such as math, physics, and chemistry. How could they be petroleum engineers if they couldn’t pass these courses?

College is too much fun to ruin it by having to study.


33 posted on 12/06/2014 9:30:50 PM PST by ladyjane
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To: ladyjane

If petro engineering is a lucrative career choice now, it won’t be long before colleges will be spewing out graduates with degrees in petro engineering.

As that begins to happen, your nephew will be older, approaching 40, and he will begin to feel the competition from younger engineers.

Soon after he’ll be scrambling to earn a living.

I have seen this happen in other professions, as young people—desperate for a future they can earn a living in—study for whatever is currently in high demand, only to end up flooding the job marketplace with applicants and bringing down the pay rate while increasing the hours worked in the given field.

It wouldn’t matter if those sociology majors studied for a career that’s in greater demand—doing so would only make the prospects worse for those who do.


34 posted on 12/07/2014 1:18:50 PM PST by Age of Reason
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To: Age of Reason

The Colarado School of Mines graduates have one of the highest starting salaries and also the highest mid-career salaries. Their starting salaries are higher than those of UC Berkeley and CalTech.

There’s no way of knowing what their salaries will be twenty years from now but it’s likely they’ll be higher than sociology or gender studies graduates.


35 posted on 12/07/2014 2:08:08 PM PST by ladyjane
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