Spurred by a domestic property debacle and a currency sell-off, Shanghai high-net-worth individuals hunt for overseas homes

Meanwhile, the clamour for overseas assets is creating a different kind of pricing pressure in some overseas markets.

“More people are coming to New York than flats that are being built there,” said Thomas Guss, president of New York Residence, a real estate broker who was in Shanghai to attend a property fair at the weekend. “It creates upwards pressure [on home prices].”

More than 6,000 visitors attended the LPS Shanghai luxury real estate show over the weekend in Shanghai, with 150 exhibitors from 50 countries promoting their property projects to potential Chinese buyers. The fair also witnessed the signing of some preliminary purchase agreements.

Shanghai developers lure buyers with easy down payments, free parking spaces

On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of Chinese people flocked to the expo, chasing details about the prices, location and trend of overseas property markets from sales managers from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Property accounts for 59.1 per cent of urban mainland Chinese household’s total assets and 75.9 per cent of their liabilities, according to a central bank survey of 30,000 households in October 2019. That is 28.5 percentage points higher than assets owned by American families.

About 96 per cent of those surveyed owned at least one property, well above the US level of 63.7 per cent. About 31 per cent of them had two properties, while 10.5 per cent owned three or more.

“We do not aim to strike it rich with overseas property purchase,” said Wang Xiaoliang, an entrepreneur in Shanghai who plans to buy a flat in Australia for his daughter studying there. “Owning a flat abroad is a way of hedging risks now that home prices in Shanghai have dropped sharply.”

Wealthy mainlanders have developed a strong affinity for property as an investment class because of surging home prices recorded over the past two decades in top-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

US real estate broker Guss added that rental income from New York-based flats was also on the rise, guaranteeing a handsome return for those who buy properties for investment purposes.

Since the start of this year, the Chinese yuan has weakened 6.2 per cent against the US dollar, resulting in an increased demand for dollar-denominated assets.

The yuan is still not convertible on the capital account, and mainland China citizens are not allowed to transfer money abroad freely for equity and property purchases.

Two executives with international property developers attending the LPS event, said many of the visitors were businesspeople who already had a global portfolio.

“We received good response from the visitors,” said Punya Mehra, a sales manager with Canvas Real Estate, a Dubai-based property advisory firm. “Chinese investors remain our biggest clients because they are actively looking to allocate their assets around the world.”

He added that some visitors had exhibited buying interest in the properties that Canvas Brokers is marketing, which start from about US$150,000 per unit.