Which superpower is (kind of) suspicious of Chinese property investment?
Image credit: Chinagestion.com
Seeking relief from a depreciating yuan, Chinese outbound investors have been on a roll lately, proposing jaw-dropping acquisitions in the commercial real estate sector in recent months from Dubai to Yangon and every investment haven in between.
The speeds of capital deployment from the Middle Kingdom has been met with suspicion both at home and abroad.
Determined to foil short-term exchange rate fluctuations, China’s foreign exchange regulator has more aggressively stepped in offshore property deals.
According to the South China Morning Post, property developers have found it trickier to deploy capital amounting to more than USD50 million outside China now.
Analysts believe the regulations may explain the relative slowdown in offshore property investments from China.
More: After the US, UK and Australia, where’s next for Chinese buyers?
Jones Lang LaSalle reported that Chinese outbound property investments dropped 30 percent in Q1 2016 to USD3.4 billion, per South China Morning Post.
Compounding investors’ troubles is the belated difficulty in penetrating the American property market.
Wary of threats to national security, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has been reviewing, and in some cases, nixing proposed purchases stateside.
In 2014, CFIUS reviewed 147 proposed projects, 24 of which were Chinese in origin, Bloomberg reported.
For reasons still undisclosed, Anbang Insurance Group’s plans to acquire Connecticut-based hotel chain Starwood for USD14 billion fell through in March. The Beijing-based holding company had famously bought New York City’s iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel from Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc for USD1.95 billion in 2014.
More: Chinese buyers still love splurging on US property
Chinese buyers have exhibited a more voracious appetite for residential real estate though. In a study by the Asia Society and Rosen Consulting Group, per The Guardian, Chinese have now surpassed Canadians as the biggest foreign buyers of US homes.
Chinese funnelled USD93 billion into American residences from 2010 through 2015, compared with USD17 billion for commercial property, the study said.
In Australia, Treasurer Scott Morrison recently spurned an attempt by China’s Dakang Holdings to acquire S. Kidman and Co’s enormous cattle farmland, which covers 1.3 percent of the Australian landmass.
Others have been more welcoming of Chinese money – seemingly none more so than Dubai developers. In anticipation of the 2020 World Expo, Chinese moved an estimated USD463 million into Dubai properties in the first nine months of 2015, Reuters reported.
Closer neighbours are benefiting as well. According to The Myanmar Times, Chinese investors are investing in an ambitious Yangon property development and flouting current property laws in the process.
Source : property-report.com
Read more…From Dubai to Yangon, signs of Chinese wealth are seemingly everywhere
