Foreign buyers purchased $121.0 billion of residential property
Foreign buyers purchased $121.0 billion of residential property from April 2017—March 2018, a decrease from $153 billion during the previous 12-month period. Despite this decrease, this number is the second highest ever recorded.
Indeed, foreign buyers in the United States represented 65 billion dollars in 2010, and grew to surpass 100 billion dollars each year since 2015. Therefore, 2018 was still a very impressive year in regards to home sales to foreigners.
Top five foreign buyers in the USA
The top five nationalities of international buyers are still the same:
- China
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- India
- Mexico
Indeed this is exactly the same top 5 as the year before. Naturally, Chinese buyers still top the ranking, with $30.4 billion invested into American real estate last year.
China, Canada, UK, India and Mexico: less than half of international home buyers
Although China represents 25% of total foreign investment in U.S. residential real estate, the top 5 together don’t reach 50% of this market. Indeed, while China, Canada, India, Mexico and the UK represented 80% of foreign investment in 2010, it is now pretty stable around 50%.
Consequently, foreign buyers needs to be considered as a long-tail market.
266,000 properties bought
Foreign buyers purchased 266,754 residential properties in the United States last year.
8% of all real estate transactions in the USA
Therefore, foreign buyers represented 8% of the buyers of existing homes. What’s more, the average price of properties purchased by foreign buyers was $454,400, although the median price of properties purchased by international home buyers was $292,400.
Foreigners pay 56% more on average
Foreign buyers continued to purchase properties at significantly higher prices compared with the national average. Indeed, among existing home buyers, the average price was $290,600 (+56%).