Posted on 08/30/2015 6:58:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
After yet another drop in the Shanghai stock market and Hang Seng index on August 6, Daniel Chang heard his cell phone ping.
The real-estate agent was on a business trip in Shanghai, and he was mid-bite during a dinner when he saw his phone light up from a message on his app, WeChat.
It was a Chinese client concerned over a $6 million property she was about to buy in New York City. She was visiting New York at the time.
"I don't know if I can do this," she told him over voicemail. "I might have to back out."
She wanted some time to reconsider, she said, and maybe recoup her losses on the Chinese stock. She was considering dropping the $600,000 she had already put down on the cooperative — she had already lost as much on the stock market.
Then, over the course of a week, the Shanghai Composite had a brief and unsteady rise, while the yuan devalued by 3.2%. Chang's client surveyed the apartment one more time.
She closed the deal.
Chang's client is one of the group of wealthy Chinese caught in between a rock and a hard place: Leave their assets in China to potentially weather additional market volatility and yuan devaluations — or put it in real estate that is now more expensive than just a few weeks earlier.
"Lots of my clients have been hit heavily by the equity market," Chang, who was once a vice president at HSBC's private bank, told Business Insider through a series of interviews. "But that only makes them more determined to diversify out of China."
The chaos of the past few weeks is likely to lead to an acceleration in the rate of real-estate purchases by wealthy Chinese buyers in the US and elsewhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Won't they be surprised when it all falls into the sea?
China has nearly 5 times as many people as America does.
Yet Americans cannot buy land in China.
We need to begin protecting America. We have sold out our very own nation for far too long.
Equal laws. Now.
Agreed. They’re buying in a panic and that never works out in their favor.
Yes. And won’t the realty brokers be surprised if communist China re- imposes stricter monetary export controls. Ha! One decision in Beijing and just about the entire real estate market in a number of cities crashes ( yet again). V
They’re already buying houses in Silicon Valley. As a result, housing costs are through the moon.
yep
What do they mean about to?
It’s been going on for decades.
I guess they mean more than just San Gabriel Valley.
Look for house prices to triple.
Communists buy house outside china, in the US, and have an anchor baby often, to have a place to escape to when it gets bad.
And it is getting a bit bad there.
When was the last time a white westerner immigrated to china and became a citizen?
This warning is at least two years late for prime properties in Californicator land.
Wealthy former ChiComs have been the major ethnic buyers of million $ homes in desirable California areas for about two years.
4 years ago many of those million $ homes were selling for at least half that price. Sometimes they get into bidding wars for a home with each other and other rich refugees from other countries, Texas and NY City.
The last time this happened was the invasion by rich Japanese buying homes, golf courses, wineries, and posh getaway properties.
“Great. The average price on the mid-Peninsula (SF) is going to jump another million dollars. Our kids can’t afford to live here unless they are making 300k at Google or Facebook and are fleeing California. What a mess.”
We have a couple of younger relatives in their late 30’s to mid 40’s with at least 300k$ income per year, and they live 50 to 60 miles from SF.
A two bedroom apartment in the wino counties rents from $2500 to $3500/ month. The rentors tell those wanting to rent, that besides having a good credit rating they need to have an income, 3-4 times the monthly rent.
WARNING!!! CHICAP HATERS MUST NOT READ FURTHER
This story appears in the September 7, 2015 issue of Forbes.
ZILLOW.COM SAYS my house in Silicon Valley–which, as the drone flies, is equidistant from Stanford, Apple AAPL +0.88% and Google GOOGL -1.37%–has doubled in value since March 2009. The recent surge is partly driven by buyers from China. I’ll share an anecdote that everyone in the Valley has seen or heard. A house goes on the market for $3 million (the typical price for a 2,500-square-foot home on one-quarter acre). Within two weeks the house has sold. Later you learn that it went for 20% over the list price and that the buyer made an all-cash offer. The buyer was from China.
The market speaks. But what is it saying? I was in Singapore and Taiwan last month and discussed the fact that Chinese buyers are bidding up Silicon Valley prices. Singapore and Taiwan are also seeing this, as are Sydney, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. The question is: Are rich Chinese house buyers diversifying, or are they planning an escape for themselves and their children? Is it Plan A or Plan B?
If you knew the answer, you could make a lot of money. China watchers around the world are trying to guess whether China’s stock meltdown and yuan devaluation are a correction or an earthquake. If smart Chinese have taken some stock market profits and reinvested them in American and Australian coastal real estate, then China’s 37-year growth story is poised to continue. On the other hand, if smart Chinese are planning their exits, China might be in bigger trouble than most know.
Yuan banknotes and US dollars are seen on a table in Yichang, central China’s Hubei province on August 14, 2015. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
China’s critics appeared to be vindicated during this summer’s troubles. But beware: Many China bashers have predicted China’s demise for a long time. James Chanos, the Wall Street billionaire, has steered investors away from China for years. American journalist Gordon Chang wrote a book predicting China’s collapse, The Coming Collapse of China (Random House), which came outin 2001. Chang is right about one thing. China’s central government, at the pleading of debt-bloated state-owned banks, wants to slap China’s thriving online banks, such as Alibaba Alipay, with credit limits of 5,000 yuan. Hardly enough to buy one iPhone. This high-handed move would cripple Alibaba, Tencent and other Chinese online stars.
CHINA’S DEATH IS EXAGGERATED
To get it wrong regarding China, as a businessperson, investor, politician or military strategist, is a goof that has consequences. The best place from which to gain an understanding of China, I would argue, is not Europe or the U.S. (including Silicon Valley, which has the best American seat from which to view China). It’s also not from China, where information is hard to come by, the contents of your laptop’s hard drive are considered free for the taking and Google’s Gmail mysteriously stops working. The best places are from the smaller countries in China’s neighborhood where free speech and association are allowed. Singapore and Taiwan are two such places. These countries are allies of the U.S. but can’t afford to make major investment or political errors regarding China.
The opinion on China from Singapore and Taiwan falls closer to Plan A than Plan B, as described earlier. I was invited to speak at a quarterly board meeting of Temasek, Singapore’s $200 billion sovereign wealth fund. For the fiscal year Temasek’s fund–diversified in stocks, real estate and commodities–was up 19%. Smart folks. Several Temasek board members said they thought China’s summer stock swoon was a correction. The drop mirrors an earlier correction in Hong Kong stocks. China’s projected GDP growth of 7% isn’t a mirage, as Jim Chanos and other Western pundits have asserted. China’s growth is real and, if anything, is probably understated.
This story appears in the September 7, 2015 issue of Forbes.
Continued from page 1
The key error many Americans make regarding China’s economy is in underestimating the strength of the country’s private and entrepreneurial sectors. They make up 70% of the country’s GDP–most of which is vibrant. Any weakness is in hoary old SOEs (state-owned enterprises), which include old-line banks with credit bubbles. Missed are the impact of such entrepreneurs as Xiaomi’s Lei Jun, dubbed the Steve Jobs of China, and the enduring strength of tech giants Lenovo and Huawei. Also missed is the role played by the millions of businesses that employ 12 or fewer employees. The small fry are armed: They have smartphones, connections to global markets and (for now) online banking and credit.
For a clear look into what’s going on in China–good and bad–read FORBES ASIA. I also highly recommend a recent book, China’s Disruptors (Portfolio), by Edward Tse, a management consultant who has spent the last 20 years getting to know the country’s best entrepreneurs
That’s been a pretty typical rule of thumb over the years — housing should not be more than 25% to 33% of your take-home income. My son shares a floor in a house in San Fran with friends. It’s a three story home near Golden Gate Park. Five people per floor x 3 floors x $1,200 per person average = $18,000 per month for the entire house! Landlords are cleaning up.
Exactly my point.
Exactly.
China has now half of America’s former manufacturing, 51 % ownership, and more all the time. Go in any store, and everything was imported from China.
China does NOT allow immigration, by non-Chinese. We are selling out our own nation.
We are completely selling out. Completely.
Wasn’t Forbes just bought by Chinese?
Thanks.
We haven’t rented for 50 years, I forgot about the income requirement.
Chinese women are also producing anchor babies here in the US. Seems like a good strategy for if China experiences “unrest”.
I think so.
Forbes has been producing an Asia Forbes for a long time now. I would assume that is a part of the arrangement.
By being critical, you miss the point that Asia is where the action is.
Chicaps And Thaicaps and Indocaps and Singacaps are all ascendent
I see a win-win here. My wife and I are currently remodeling her mom's house in San Francisco, as her mom is now living in an assisted-living facility. Every week, real-estate agents are dropping postcards and flyers about what they sold nearby, hoping to entice us to sell. Costs of homes here are going up about 10 percent in price every year. Many of the real-estate postcards brag about the ones that sold for 3 or 4 hundred thousand over asking price, and as all cash purchases. I'm talking about $1.2 to $2 million in cash. Clearly many of these are Chinese buyers.
The win-win is that they are also dropping big bucks into fixing these homes, lifting the quality of the neighborhoods. Gentrification going on everywhere. Who wants dilapidated run-down houses and neighborhoods? Bad thing is kids can't afford them, unless they get really good jobs. If the real-estate bubble pops, the fixed-up homes will still be pretty and nice.
I do mortgage lending in the middle of the country.
I see way quite few Chinese nationals buying property here.
Old Friend, you use the word hate sometimes like the race card baiters.
I don’t hate the ChiComCaps for buying property in our area.
The value of our home goes up when they buy a home. They take excellent care of their property. There is no devaluation of our neighborhood nor are we in any danger from our new neighbors. So our area unlike Detroit/Baltimore/? has increasing property value
Most have no children in school or college, yet they pay the new high assessment of property taxes on their homes to pay for our expensive and often non productive schools.
No drive by shootings or drug battles are caused by these new neighbors.
Our police are not called out at night to breakup serious and dangerous family battles.
So we benefit, when our new ChiComCap neighbors buy a house and move in.
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