Chinese investment in the Australian real estate market doubled last year. An annual report showed that China was the biggest investor for the financial year that ended on June 30, 2015. China received approvals to spend $18 billion which was three times the figure the Unted States put in and six times of what what Singapore had invested.
The prices of Chinese approvals were up from the $12 billion when China overtook the US for the first time as Australia's largest foreign investor in real estate. Foreign investment in Australia generally required government approval.
Chinese investment had been helping fuel a construction boom in Australia that had been shielding the economy from downturns as the years of success in the mining sector investment came to an end, according to a feature from Financial Review.
Australia was now the second-most-popular market for Chinese investors after the U.S. Some Chinese investors had become more careful in recent months due to Beijing's introduction of controls to prevent excessive money from leaving the nation. The controls were implemented due to the nation's stock market slide and sluggish economic growth.
During the second half of last financial year, the Australia also initiated a crackdown on homeownership laws abuse by foreign buyers. The government had ordered several residential-property owners to return their properties to the market after allegations of illegally acquiring said established properties. The current laws generally allowed foreign investors to only purchase homes before they were built, typically in apartment and condominium developments.
Juwai.com's chief executive officer Charles Pittar stated that there still remained a great pent-up demand for international property among foreign investors.
Chinese investment share had risen from below one-tenth to over one-quarter of the entire Australian foreign real-estate investment since 2012. This showed that observers who claimed Chinese investment was failing were badly informed, as appetite for residential property soared, according to a feature from Domain.
