Recently, I chanced upon a newspaper advertisement touting to Singaporeans “how to buy US distressed properties?” Reading this advertisement makes me wonder if the US property market is a bargain. My guts feel the US property market may fall further. This was confirmed further on a simple search in google. I search for “ buy US distressed properties” and one of the result came out confirmed my suspicion. The article is below:
Beijing Expo shows massive interest in overseas property
02/08/2011
The number of overseas property schemes on show at last week’s Beijing Real Estate Expo doubled to more than 80, when compared with last year’s event, and international agents from more than 20 countries took part including the United States, Australia, Canada, Britain, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong. “The whole event was really, really positive with huge crowds and massive media interest,” says Fortune Real Estate partner Steve Dawkins.
Speaking exclusively to OPP from the Far East this week, Dawkins said that “the Beijing Real Estate Expo more than met our expectations as an exhibitor allowing us to generate more than 200 leads over the four days of the show.” “There were lots of local, domestic Chinese stands on the ground floor and overseas property exhibitors upstairs, and the place was packed. The organisers estimate between 100,000 and 120,000 visitors attended and we met a huge number of serious buyers.” Dawkins told OPP “clearly there is a passion for buying more domestic property in China at the moment, but the overseas market is growing very fast indeed.
It is early days for Chinese property buyers who want to look abroad, but we found a lot of wealthy middle class buyers coming to talk to us about investing overseas, especially in an English language country where they can invest close to a good school or university.” Fortune RE’s stand found that many of the potential buyers were self-employed entrepreneurs and that the UK was their favourite destination followed by Australia then the USA. “Distressed American properties appeal,” says Dawkins, “but London and the UK is their favourite option. And Thailand for holiday homes and Istanbul for good investment yields also came up as popular targets.”
This showed that US distressed properties are being market to faraway buyers like Chinese in China. I questioned if the properties are undervalued, why didn’t people like Robert Kiyosaki and real estate investors buy it? I suspect a major decline is in the cards for the naïve Chinese buyers. Let us await our opportunities ahead.
