Chinese step up investments in foreign projects
Investors spend more than US$8b overseas as they widen their focus to developments in secondary cities to achieve better yields
Chinese outbound investment in real estate has jumped to more than US$8 billion last year from US$2 billion in 2012 and the buying spree has started to extend from gateway cities to secondary ones, says property consultancy CBRE.
But he said some property developers were now involved in major construction projects overseas, citing the US$1 billion investment by Greenland in a central Los Angeles mixed-use development.
Ludeman said that while Chinese overseas investment would continue, the buying pattern had been changing.
Chinese investors still focus on what they call gateway cities but they have started to try secondary cities such as Sydney in Australia. They might go to Frankfurt and Munich in Europe. Or they would go to Houston, San Francisco and Seattle in the United States, areas that just happen to have large populations of Asian-Americans.
Their investments last year involved commercial properties, including office, retail, industrial and hotel projects. Investment values were at or above US$10 million each, data from CBRE and Real Capital Analytics showed.
