Chinese real estate investors are not only buying up properties in prestige locations like New York and Los Angeles, other places like Florida and the Midwest are becoming a hot target.
Buyers from China and Hong Kong accounted for $9 billion of U.S. home sales in the 12 months ending in March, up 89 percent from 2010.
They are the second-largest group of foreign buyers of homes in the U.S. behind Canadians, according to data released earlier this month by the National Association of Realtors.
Over the last six months in New York, several full-floor apartments in a new Manhattan high-rise called One57, each with a price tag of roughly $50 million, have gone into contract with Chinese buyers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Real-estate agents say that while Chinese investors primarily target New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, they are beginning to expand into cities in southern Florida as well as outposts such as Seattle and Las Vegas.
That's a drastic change from a few years ago, when they were "fearful" of Florida, says Steven Lawson, chief executive of Windham China, a Shanghai-based company that helps find Chinese buyers property in the U.S.
"There was a false perception in China that Miami is not a safe city because a lot of Chinese watch 'CSI: Miami' or 'Miami Vice' on TV."
Last year, Chinese real estate investors also bought up hot properties in Ohio. In March 2011, Chinese investors paid $2.15 million cash for a restaurant complex on the Maumee River in Toledo, Ohio. Soon they put down another $3.8 million on 69 acres of newly decontaminated land in the city's Marina District, promising to invest $200 million in a new residential-commercial development.
Last September, another Chinese firm spent $3 million for an aging hotel across a nearby bridge with a view of the minor league ballpark.
