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 ...
“And as a side note, I have yet to come across an Asian owned property that wasn’t immaculately maintained, “
Haven’t been to China have you.
That's certainly a contradiction in statements. Show us where the successful Asian population here in the U.S. are primarily supporters of the Democrap party.........
Then I would certainly like to see empirical evidence of that claim........
Mainland China? Who's talking about China bro, were talking about here in the United States.....
Please, don't go off on a tangent, try to stay on topic.
Are you serious? California invented the real-estate bubble in the 80s! Where were you?
LOL! Where the heck did you come up with that????? The Karate Kid?......"Mr. Miogi"
Well SCREW YOU TOO for being too ignorant to realize that no country is stealing anything from the U.S. that isn't ultimately benefiting us in either technology or lower prices for products provided.......
If I didn't know better, I'd think you're a union supporter.........I'll check it out.
If just half of them are coming to get away from communism that is a plus. Too bad the sellers don’t switch countries too.
“I guess it was naive to think that all the money we send to China wouldn’t be recycled back to the US. It was bad enough that the Chinese bought up so much of our profligate government’s debt, but it seems worse to have them use all the money we sent them over decades to snatch up our properties and drive our housing prices way beyond the stratosphere.”
That’s only half the story; there is no “next generation” of Americans to buy the homes these Red Chinese are moving into. As with the Mexican “replacement Americans”, I suspect these Red Chinese are mostly moving into dying states.
Unions supporter, ha.
Free trade = globalism
Too bad they’ll bring their penchant for corruption and support for communism with them.
That same protectionist argument has been going on for at least 500 years.
England under Henry VIII couldn’t compete with the cloth manufacturers in the Netherlands, so he passed protectionist laws that required the peasants to wear wool hats made in England.
The Luddites couldn’t compete against machines, so they rioted and burned factories. Machines by the way really are slave labor.
English farmers couldn’t compete against American farmers, so they passed more protectionist laws and they went further in the hole.
None of those laws get you anywhere. In the end you lose anyway.
Japan did not pay their workers well post WWII. They were hungry and they worked cheap; and an open society? Right. Sure it was.
The Zenith factory didn’t shut down and reopen in Japan. Why should they? There was already and Sony factory there and a Toyota plant. Those steel foundry jobs disappeared, so did the manufacturing jobs, and the people bitched about it then just like you are now.
The answer is do it better, find something else to do, or start a war and win it (and don’t give away the win with a Marshall plan). Root, hog, or die.
So, you’re either ignorant just another Union shill.
What you said BUMP.
If you are a straight, white, taxpaying, traditional family man in the US, the Democrats have a target on your back.
Yep..
BTW, I got a kick out of your “Hate crime hoaxes”...
I’ve seen that kind of thing close up...If they can’t find any hate/racism, just make some up and run with it.
come back when you have a real argument
You think China is rich? ROFL.
Japan has been #2 or #3 in GDP for the past 5 decades. You think the only money in the world is in America?
The first, sadly, yes. The second, no. Most successful Chinese hate the Communist leadership as much as anyone else does... but the business elite know that membership has its privileges, and as long as it is the easiest way to gain and maintain wealth, only foolish businesspeople fail to pretend to want to belong. You might as well whine about large corporations who use lobbyists and political donations to gain an advantage. It's just how things are done when your government has too much power... as most do today.
“Public schools are public schools, no matter where they are located.”
You don’t know the school, the curriculum, or my kids, yet for some reason you are compelled to spout nonsense about them. By “good” I mean as good or better than private or home-schooled kids. You really aren’t capable of commenting on the specifics, so please spare me your comments about my daughter’s education.
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