I'm reading this article and it kinda gets me worried a bit. I know the article is about luxury properties in Toorak, but surely there will be other Chinese buyers snapping up property in different areas.
Currently a renter and it feels like buying my first property will be out of reach for a long time.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/melbourne-vic/nu…
you must like bad investments.
But I really want to buy yuan !!!
Leave Juan out of this
Yuan does not simply buy property in China.
yes you can.
Only 1 property and you need to live there for a year… And you cannot rent it out.
Need to apply the same rules here…
https://www.mychinainterpreter.com/china-expats-guide/can-fo…
… and you're only leasing it for up to 99 years…and they can take it back / give you a shittier place if they plan to build something else there (and they might change their mind later).
@idonotknowwhy: It's the same in the ACT. Ever hear of crown land? Houses in Canberra are a 99 year lease
@spammingb: The difference is in name only…. not a single canberra "lease" has been cancelled/not renewed.
The government can reacquire land in ACT, just like the state governments can in 'normal' states.
Don't get hung up on the wording, an ACT "lease" works exactly the same way as "title" does in any state. None provides more security than the other.
Likewise not a single China "lease" has been cancelled/not renewed.
Hong Kong has entered the chat.
@spammingb: That's not true, in China, when the government needs your land to make way for a new development like a major shopping district, metro railway, highway etc. That's it, your house is gone. Similar to how it works here, except they force you to take their relocation offer rather than bait you with a high offer going lower and lower every time you don't sell but your neighbours do.
Unfortunately, in China, renting it out is a bad idea. Once you add the windows, floor coverings, etc., it starts to depreciate in value!
@jv: It might be dodgy and the tenants falls out and you'll end up losing both kidneys due to your corruption.
No!
Can Australians buy Chinese Property?
Not even the Chinese can buy Chinese property, it's all leases.
dont english do the same?
no
Some do. Most don't.
@R4: apparently they also do have leaseholds (as well as freeholds), the first being cheaper i couldnt find any quantifier as to which occurs the most
@juki: Freehold dominates but many apartments are still leasehold. It's an old, terrible, system that's mainly been replaced with a common hold system for newer buildings but it still exists.
and some parts of Australia too, ACT is all 99 year leases.
The leaseholds in England are still actually owned by private individuals though - known as the 'freeholder'.
In China the government owns everything.
This is correct. With Commy system like China and Vietnam, you're buying the right to use the land but the land ultimately belongs to the government. Therefore, if they want to build a road where you live then good luck with taking them to kangaroo court.
It's like when you buy a movie on iTunes. God damn commy Apple.
@Munki: Pretty much. Same with putting money in the bank, if you dont meet cobdition they take your money, scummy banks
@mikeoxlarge: And if you do meet their cobditions, they still take your money.
Some Chinese folk banded together and protested in front of a branch/bank that was stealing their money. The government took swift action to arrest and punish those victims. The banks are still standing, and their managers enjoying their overseas vacation.
@Kangal: Got to be specific Managers and executives. The customer service staff getting paid less than super markets but gets abused on a daiky basis
Yes. But there is no freehold as we know it. Everything is effectively leasehold, with ownership returning to the government after (I think) 70 years.
Having said that, the prices are competitive to those in Australia, however renting there is far cheaper.
Certainly something I'm more than casually thinking about, although there are MANY better options than Australia if you want to live well, especially in retirement.
with the economic downturn many countries such as portugal are changing their rules
I'm a big believer in quid pro quo. Unfortunately successive governments haven't been interested.
You never know how good you have till its gone.
Same here with australians, love to whinge and whine , even though we might not have it as good as the boomer generation, its still miles ahead of 98% of the world . Thats why immigrants do well, they know australia/canada/uk/europe ( not US its a pile of Poo) is still the best the world has to offer lifestyle, security and future wise and are willing to work for it to secure it , the 2nd/3rd gen of immigrants and the born and bred aussies love to just whinge and whine ( i Stopped visiting reddit, i got depressed thinking that i hope not all of gen y/ millenials/gen z are all a bunch of whingers and whiners) , BTW I'm a Gen Y as well. You can have multi millions in the bank and still not sleep well at night in china , look at Jack Ma and the other billionaires . That is the primary reason chinese money is flooding the first world property markets . you own your house, no one can take it away just because you said the leader looks like winnie the pooh.
All this about foreigners not being able to buy anything but new properties is a load of bull.
** Foreign buyers( non resident visa holders) can buy with a FIRB approval( cost a few thousand) plus a 8% stamp duty surcharge, this is nothing for them as they pay 5-10% just getting the money out of the country
**Its not foreign buyers who buy the property, their kids who come here as students and their proxies do, they are the one you see at auctions, then the parents who write the cheques come to join them later . You dont t know how invaluable it is for them to get the money out of china and whitewashed. When the money was earned though non legal channels( effectively free without having to work for it ) , the cost to wash it ( say 10-25% is nothing) .
The cure :
Nothing can be done with the status quo , both Labor/Liberals are getting woolies/coles shopping bags of cash to look the other way plus the developers stuffing them full of chinese food and their pockets full of cash in chinese restaurants , if you want change, make it known and go and complain to your MP in person and vote to reflect it ( not vote for the greens, they will give your house to the refugees and tell you to go live on the streets), not just whinge on ozbargain/reddit/whirlpool.
First part I disagree with. I'm pretty set in my opinion that Australia is a good country, but most of the people here suck. I can find you endless first generation ethnic immigrants to Aus who say exactly that, paraphrased.
Actual quoted phrase, "Australia good country, but the people no good".
The second and third paragraphs you wrote, I agree with.
Australia is really good at funding terrorist organisations too, better than Pakistan actually. lol
Australians are per capita the biggest consumers of illicit drugs as well. Might have changed in the last few years, but I don't think so.
This has been going on for years and years. Lost every property auction I have bid on due to Asian investors that don't mind slapping another $100k, another $200k, another $300k on top of guide price, no problem for them. It's not a new concept.
He said every, not one. And lets be honest, Asian investors clearly have a lot of money to splash and are quite happy to throw down more money than an owner occupier. So the 10% plus or minus is irrelevant. They just have more money to spend pricing the average buyer out of the market. They generally all end up as investments and rented out anyway.
that's basically every auction you ever go to, the guide price is always below the market price to draw people in, I can't see how this is relevant to asian investors
I can't see how this is relevant to asian investors
They seem to have shit loads more $ available than others. Go to a few auctions, been to a few round my area on a boring day and its nearly all the same buyers.
Is there bets available for hpw much higher the chinese will bid more than asking price. 100k increments. Just so they can sink more money into already overpriced houses
Can you tell the difference between a Chinese buyer and a local Asian buyer
A lot of Asian migrants/refugee children have grown up and looking for property… they're successful and have the bank of mum and dad
They're come in with big deposits, thats how they're out bidding eveyone
I'm very well aware of Asia oldies/refugees who are earning above average income but have 500k-mil for their kids, because they live like they're on minimal wage and refuse to spend money on themselves
@Baghern: Also because those migrants are boomers who bought multiple investment properties in major cities with a household of only two median salaries.
1mil in savings might not be feasible, but 1mil+ in equity is virtually guaranteed if you invested all your disposable income into property in the 80s to 90s.
Source: parents and all their friends
They're 2 different concepts albeit interlinked. The same few buyers agents (representing people on the phone) attend all auctions no matter if it's in Chipping Norton, Panania, Ingleburn, Liverpool or anywhere else within Western Sydney.
They all have the same process, guide price $1.1m, bidding starts at $1.0m and they wait for the families to bid each other in $5k increments, gets to $1.2m, second call, then slap on a larger $20k or $50k increase to outbid everyone else. If someone brave enough to bid again, they'll just add another large figure on top till they win. It doesn't matter to them if ends up $1.3m or $1.5m. There's no "I'm out".
The main thing is bringing money out of their own countries so an extra couple hundred thousand is no problem. Every single auction I attended was won by foreign investment. The REAs admit this themselves and know these buyer's agents very well. Following weekend, I see the same families bidding on another house auction with the same buyer's agents for foreign investors showing up and rinse repeat…
I'm not complaining, such is life. They simply have more money than I do and that's how it is. I ended up continuing to rent in the meanwhile.
I'm guessing there is an I'm Out at some price… otherwise it only takes a smart-idiot to take it to the moon, and stop?
@Ulysses31: Buyers' Agents make their money on commission, e.g. each Buy, and are also conflicted as they advise the Buyers, too. They are not paid to attend auction after auction and find a bargain.
If they pay too much, they only have to tell their overseas client (who won't understand the local market), it was a good buy. The Buyers are usually in a hurry and their BA won't make such a big return if their success rate at auction is anything less than 100% given there is no shortage of Buyers.
In an environment where the agents end up competing with each other and having to show be more transparent about their performance (this never happens, it is always easier to lie than tell the truth and risk losing face), can this change.
REAs know this, and take advantage, if they can. A savvy vendor/and or REA, if dodgy, will also begin bidding to push the Buyers Agents bids up, and directly pump the sell price. Instead of 5k-2k-1k-2nd call-50k, it goes 50k-50k-50k-50k… until the Vendor's Secret Buying Agent wimps out, etc.
Nothing will attract this behaviour more than a cool extra million on their property. Happens in China too, no doubt worse- there is a bubble there because of the spread of similar hysteria.
Lost every property auction I have bid on due to Asian investors that don't mind slapping another $100k…
With hindsight, if you had slapped on an additional $100k on your first auction, would you be sweet now? That is, ahead?
(PS: I'm not criticizing you for not having a crystal ball).
Nope, didn't have the extra $100k pre-approval and they would have added on top of it anyway so back to same circle.
How did we get from an article about CHINESE buying very high end properties to any Asian person bidding at auctions you were also bidding at? So those Asian people are necessarily Chinese and investors and filthy rich? If I (raised here for decades and an Australian citizen with English as my language) bid on a property then I must be like those people in the article?
Let's bring back the White Australia Policy and stop these yellow devils from buying our land…. Who's land is it really to begin with?
You’re bidding for yourself. The commentary was specifically about buyers agents for foreign investors via phone with seemingly unlimited budgets.
Chill out.
Yes I see that from your later comments. Was just referencing your initial comment. It's clear that this is by and large a Chinese (mainland Chinese) phenomenon, so by going from that to saying "Asian" seems to be broadening the scope immensely and is inaccurate.
Us other Asians from other countries are also experiencing the same challenges you are.
@Tuukmaak: Apparently it's not just wealthy Chinese foreign investors but there's quite a few Vietnamese ones too according to the REAs. I cannot verify this, nor differentiate personally, so use the more respectful and broader "Asian" terminology than pointing finger in a specific direction I cannot back up.
It's the same as referring to "Arabs" buying up malls, sports clubs, buildings, hotels, ports in the UK and USA instead of singling out Middle Eastern Saudis or Emiratis or Qataris specifically. Same concept.
You are indeed part of the same challenging scape. Vast majority of us are all immigrants here in any case so we're in the same boat.
They need a safe haven for when communism falls and the peasants chase them with pitchforks
since when has anything sold for the auction guide?
Pre-COVID plenty did. When I was being 'smart' waiting to get PR so wouldn't have to pay the 8% foreigner tax… Little did we know that would be wholly insignificant in the grand scheme of things…
nothing personally against Chinese or anything other race buying property the rules are the rules but lets all a spade a spade
international buyers serve no purpose other than pumping up the market price they can park cash in a appreciating assets
i dont have issue with foreigners buying Apartments as long as there is some kind of rule in which developments have a 50-50 rule in which 50 percent of apartments in a building are sold to locals - but international buyers with no direct ties to Australia shouldn't be allowed to buy land based residential/farming property in Australia if you're not a citizen
commercial property can have different rules
Under 1% of property investors are foreign
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/overseas-investors-are-…
During Covid where we had 0 Chinese coming across to buy property, house prices went up 25%
https://www.corelogic.com.au/news-research/news/2022/two-yea…
So when the article says Chinese - I think they mean Australian Born Chinese or Chinese immigrants with Australian PR/Citizenship
That said, the Chinese migrants could be buying on behalf of their overseas family or the migrant could have bought their AU PR via an investor visa
The reality is that it's the investment firms buying up land. I wonder if the same people that eat up fake stuff on news.com are the same people that celebrate their Super balances going up, the very same Super funds that invest in property, the very same property that's squeezing the said people out of the market lol
Yes, our super funds and property trusts that our super funds invest in quite frankly squeeze us out of the market, not even touching on the fact places like dexus a real estate reit having institional and direct investors own and rent out heaps of commercial real estate on pretty much bottomless pockets.
There are always ways around the rules.
But I think that while foreign buyers are very visible, they are not the real root cause of the problem.
If high prices were due to foreign speculators, we would have cheap rentals with investors flooding the market. But no, there is a shortage.
Demand is increasing, and new supply of both land and construction is limited, so very expensive.
During Covid where we had 0 Chinese coming across to buy property, house prices went up 25%
you dont think that had anything to do with interest rates being 0.01 percent and almost no stock on the market
Under 1% of property investors are foreign
might still by 1 percent but you might want to fact check that seems a HELL of a lot higher then that based on this source
'We estimate that foreigners purchased 13,000–20,000 new dwellings in Victoria, representing 25–35% of total new builds in the year. The market share seems to be higher in Queensland (25–45% of new dwellings) and lower in New South Wales (15–20%).'
https://propertyupdate.com.au/foreign-buyers-of-australian-property-how-many-are-there/#:~:text=We%20estimate%20that%20foreigners%20purchased,Wales%20(15%E2%80%9320%25).
new build sales is very different to total sales
new build sales is very different to total sales
this is fair
do you have a source? regarding international ownership numbers?
if that many new builds are going overseas i find it impossible to believe less then 1% of invested properties are internationally owned
@Trying2SaveABuck: at least in SA, i thought foreign buyers HAD to build, couldn't buy existing stock
idea was to build more houses.. dno if still true
You are correct, it mainly had to do with the lack of stock and nothing has changed in this regard if anything its worse. I was just trying to point out that the housing crisis is not primary result of foreign investors though it does contribute to the problem.
housing crisis is not primary result of foreign investors though it does contribute to the problem.
No body is saying it is but i mealy am pointing out that is it a contributing factor
The primary factor is un-sustainable growth in population via migration (without matching infrastructure) which is why we need to blame the ALP government for increasing the numbers - we had a population of 10m in 1960 and now we are 26m that's 160% growth in less then a decade the majority of that growth came during and post the kRudd disgrace of a government
A lot of lefties love the Scandinavian countries so ill use Denmark which in 1960 was around 3.6m now is 5.3m - a much more stable growth to maintain a high standard of living
@Trying2SaveABuck: Just to point out the elephant in the room.
PR/Citizenship is several times cheaper than houses. It makes no financial sense to be disadvantaged with extra costs and legislation buying as a foreign investor when you can just become a PR/citizen.
The whole idea of foreign investors causing housing crisis is internally flawed and made up by people who cant do math. Those foreign-looking investors all have PR or Australian passports.
By the way, that was what I did too.
@ripesashimi: If you have a cap on immigration it stops ppl from 'just becoming citizens'
As it becomes applications based on merit not just whoever wants to come settle hear like the muppets in charge have done now
There is a fair amount of ALP die hard voters on Ozbargain so im copping down votes but most people know this govt is terrible
@Trying2SaveABuck: That is an entire massive area and again, several elephants in the room that no one cares to mention.
Caps always exist and in fact have never been reached every year within the past 5 years. Have they been useful?
Define merit. Is it merit on paper or merit based on the contribution of that applicant to Australia? The government provides very mixed messages.
What do merit and caps mean in the context of partner visas? People dont even dare to talk about it. How do we measure and evaluate love?
Caps always exist and in fact have never been reached every year within the past 5 years. Have they been useful?
the current cap is around 400-500k in the 90s it was 70-75k - since we have increased the cap from the 70k region standards of living have been dropping due to over-stretch infrastructure - in the 90s the cap was pretty much always reached
As for merit it really isnt that hard ie if you're a criminal ur out, if you can afford to sustain yourself without government support your out, id add if you cant read or write English your also out
unfortunately the government we have is happy to release criminals into society
@Trying2SaveABuck: Careful there. If citizenship was based on math, comprehension, or ability to write with correct English and grammar you'd be on the first plane out of here.
Careful there. If citizenship was based on math, comprehension, or ability to write with correct English and grammar you'd be on the first plane out of here.
im 99% sure i have a higher level of education then you, have a better grasp of math, science, medicine and investing and most if not all other matters of importance …also i can 'comprehend' a casual online website doesn't require you to write like you're completing and essay and the very 'fact' you can understand what im writing kind of proves that
@Trying2SaveABuck: Heh. A rather large dollop of self-importance there…
I'll send you some punctuation to use for your next rant.
@dtc: 'net migration estimate for 2022-23 of around 469,000'
Source: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/n….
we had a population of 10m in 1960 and now we are 26m that's 160% growth in less then a decade
I hate to break it to you but 1960 was six decades ago
@Trying2SaveABuck: Why blame the ALP?
Ever since 1960, of all the govs we've managed to elect, migration has only been increased at amounts >1% above average, by Coalition Gov's.
Given that this is really a function of business driving higher migration rates, and unions seldom agreeing, why is it that you think they were not the architects?
Years where migration rate was maintained or increased >1% above the prior year:
63-68 Coalition rabble Menzies-Gorton
73-87 Fraser rabble
98-07 Howard
controlled rabble
It's not like the Coalition weren't in power long enough during this period that they couldn't do anything.
BTW; All the sharpest downturns
were all under ALP, except the first in 68-73 (McMahon):
88-93 Hawke/Keating 'She'll be right'
08-09 Rudd/Gillard "If Abbot can't get ya, we'll be coming"
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/net-migr…
1% of purchasers (people) or 1% of value of total property purchased? AFR can be pretty smart assed with stats.
Foreign investors bought less than 1 per cent of residential property in Australia in 2021-22, according to official figures…
Well that's worded quite weirdly.
Are foreign investors buying up ~1% of Australian residential property each year? Because that will add up very quickly
Agree, it's a bit of a weasel word, especially if migration growth is running at 1.1% of the population
One of the problems is we are a multi cultural society, That asian or indian or any other cultural origin you care to name is just as likely to be an Australian citizen, yet people that see them bid or buy will automatically jump to the conclusion they are a foreign buyer.
We are not a multicultural society. We're multiethnic but multiculturalism has, by and large, been a failure in the West (and only the West has attempted it).
hey don't let facts get in the way of good old fear mongering and dog whistling.
Commonwealth bank said in their latest quarterly presentation that 10% of property sales last quarter were to foreigners
Can Australians buy Chinese Property?
I'm looking at diversifying…