For luxury real estate professionals looking to level-up their business in 2018, the key to surpassing the competition will lie in the ability to service an increasingly international client base. International buyers purchased $153 billion of residential property between April 2016 and March 2017, marking a significant increase from $102.6 billion during the previous 12-month period (April 2015–March 2016).
Foreign investment in U.S. real estate is on the rise for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that wealth is growing faster overseas. When we look at the most affluent of buyers, we see that billionaire wealth growth has continued, following a brief 2015 plateau. Worldwide, billionaires' total wealth grew by 17% in 2016, up from $5.1 trillion to $6 trillion, and for the first time, there are more billionaires in Asia than in the U.S. At the same time, the U.S. dollar is softening while the Euro and the Yuan grow stronger, and that doesn’t even take into account the impact of the new tax law on wealthy Americans.
