Amid the ongoing economic turmoil in China, the country's real estate market is continuously growing. For one, the commercial property prices climbed 10 percent in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the previous year.
A report from Forbes said the surge to $2.8 billion in commercial real estate prices in China is driven by the scarcity of assets in major cities. The scarcity was the result of the huge gap between the sellers and buyers expectations and the record investment in 2015 which totaled $24 billion. According to Jones Lang Lasalle in China, "Institutional investors are still looking for core stabilized assets in major cities."
Billionaires, large corporations and investment banks are leading huge transactions in the market, both in the local arena and foreign lands. But the bulk of investment in the country is in commercial real estate. Forbes said that JLL expects China's real estate market to continuously expand in the coming years, just as it did in the past couple of years. This is partly due to the increasing numbers of market players building, buying and selling property assets.
Overseas, Chinese investors are also amassing real estate assets in Europe, the United States and Australia. Voice of America said that European countries have been offering better deals to Chinese buyers in a bid to lure them from their usual go-to markets in the U.S. and Australia.
Voice of America added that according to JLL, there was a 46 percent growth in overseas investments of wealthy Chinese in 2015. This jump came amid China's efforts to take control of capital outflow from the country. Reports even say that Chinese have actually been transferring more money about the $50,000 limit the rules have set.
One of the factors that Voice of America's report noted in relation to the growing foreign property investment rate is the increasing migration rate among Chinese. The publication quoted Christian Numa, director of Melbourne-based Amity Property Group, saying, "Chinese migration are at [an] all-time high. So, they are a majority of our clients. As well as people that are looking for their kids from an education point of view. So they are the two main types of clients we are dealing with."
