Posted on 09/28/2013 9:58:32 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
The continuing influx of well-heeled homebuyers from Asia has Bay Area real estate firms competing for a lucrative and growing slice of the region's residential market. "It has gotten big enough to where people are starting to pay attention to it," said James Yang, an agent with the Sereno Group.
One Palo Alto real estate broker, Ken de Leon, bought a Mercedes-Benz van that seats 14 and is using it for tours of Palo Alto and Los Altos with a Mandarin-speaking agent.
Palo Alto has become a point of interest for many mainland Chinese shopping for a second home or planning to move to the area...people are cashing in on gains from a run-up in real estate values in China over the past decade.
On a recent weekend, the van passed the home of Steve Jobs and the garage where David Packard and William Hewlett founded HP. Each time the van passed a school a second de Leon agent called out its Academic Performance Index score. The tour ended at a home in Los Altos Hills listed at $3.998 million...a week later, it had drawn three offers.
De Leon said he has sold at least 20 homes to buyers from China in the past year, usually in the $1.5 million to $2.5 million range. Roughly half are buying as an investment, a third are buying because of the area's highly rated schools and one-fifth are buying second homes.
"Compared to Asian prices, Palo Alto is considered pretty dirt cheap," said Kenny Weng Kong Lo, general manager of Intero Real Estate Services' Hong Kong office.
Intero agent Jinny Ahn: "People are cashing out their property and moving money to the United States. Three (million) to $4 million is considered not that expensive."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Don’t worry about it. We’ll get the money back, and the houses stay here.
Oh crap, hard working, polite people who are good at math, there goes the neighborhood....
can it get any worse??
Yes, and if you work for a Chinese person you are not allowed to say their first name, same usually with rentals. It’s Ms. this or that.
The Chinese coming here are corrupt to the core and part of the wealthy elite in the mainland. This is not your ‘poor and tired’.
You have obviously never worked for someone from the Chinese elite or business class. You are frightfully naive. Yes, their merchant class may be successful (in a myopic way), but there are reasons they are despised everywhere in Asia. One reason to not worry about a Chinese century, by the way.
good.
Their government stinketh royally
When communism falls, I wonder if China would really split into 4 or 5 parts?
The article makes an interesting point that I left out of the synopsis. The Chinese people who have invested in land and property the past 10 to 15 years have made vast fortunes. The Chinese government started talking about taxing their gains at 25% — et voila! The money starts fleeing the country. These ex-Communists and socialists are now all capitalists and understand the importance of keeping one’s own wealth. The irony is that they see California (of all places) as a “safety” place for their money! This state has its mitts into everything you do.
“It is shocking to think that our Silicon Valley housing prices are “cheap” to the Chinese.”
This has been going on in my East Bay home town of Castro Valley where Chinese buyers have been gobbling up homes for years. These are $400,000 to $800,000 single family homes, not multi-million dollar mansions like in the article.
What I’m seeing are whole families, including grandparents (and sometimes both sets of grandparents), relocating from there to here for a number of reasons. I’ve had many a pleasant discussion with these folks in what I imagine is a classic American style - with the children translating in perfect English.
I have observed that these are people generally determined to become American and are investing in our culture. They’re leaving China because it is still a communist dictatorship (#1 reason) they want more children (#2), they’re getting out now while they can (my paraphrase), freedom and education.
To any saying that these folks vote democrat, I can only say that our area is one of the most conservative in the Bay Area. The schools are good. My kids got a great education not because of the teacher’s union, but because Chinese parents brought the overall standards up.
As a history guy, I remind kids and parents alike about the long history the Chinese have had in the United States. During the Gold Rush, Americans came to “see the elephant”,
Chinese came to see “the mountain of gold”.
Public schools are public schools, no matter where they are located. Kalipornia has some of the most perverted standards too.
"Good" by comparison maybe.
It sounds like apples and apples to me.
Where did the Japanese get their money in the 80's if not by selling cheap electronics and cars to America in the 70's?
People bought Sony tv's instead of Zenith, and Toyota's instead of Chevy's.
And now China’s industries are slumping as their workers move up the pecking order and lose to Vietnam, Indonesia, and others.
I remember when GM moved their electronic mfg to Mexico, then from there to China, and now....
If you can't see the difference between Japan and Red China then your are either a shill or a moron. Free Traitors have ruined this country and people that make excuses for it are just as guilty as the men that moved our jobs overseas.
What does that have to do with anything? There are lots of wealthy, successful people that are hard core leftist and vote Democrat.
I go by the cold hard facts and they fact is a large majority of Asians, immigrant or not, consistently vote Democrat.
Most blacks are religious and socially conservative but vote Democrat almost as a single unit no matter where they live in country.
The Chinese have been willing to work hard jobs for low pay instead of sitting back and living off mommy and daddy or off of welfare checks. That’s the kind of thing that reaps rewards years later.
Free trade creates a level playing field. The ones who work hardest and smartest will reap the greatest rewards.
China became more capitalist in the last 20 years. We became more socialist in the last 20 years. The difference in our relative economic gains during that time is a direct result.
The thrust of your post is that the Asian money is in fact being returned to America. You apparently didn’t realize that but yur post is evidence of the fact.
The same sort of events occurred in the early 80’s when tons of Japanese $$ were repatriated. There was no real problem then and there is no real problem now.
Nonsense, it allows multinational corporations to move profits out of the US.
I couldn’t care less about creating a “a level playing field”. I want America to be the best and screw you and anyone else what wants to help other countries steal what we have.
"Driving" or meeting a demand? Obviously you're not in the selling market.
And for what it's worth, a gal I know was searching for a winter place in Fla. but by the time she got to view any of them, Asians had bought them up.
It's apparent to me that the Asian population are more financially educated when it comes to investments and property procurement than the majority of people here in the U.S.
And as a side note, I have yet to come across an Asian owned property that wasn't immaculately maintained, as opposed to a native born minority or white trash that let their homes go into foreclosure.......that the Asians are happily picking up.
China hasn’t become more capitalist in the last 20 years. The Communists still control everything they want to control.
They are simply using capitalism as a tool to acquire the wealth and knowledge they need in order to further their goals.
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