Oct
10

Where Rich Chinese Are Buying Real Estate – Forbes

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Vancouver, London and the big cities down under are second homes of choice for China’s super rich, according to real estate services firm Colliers International.

One of the reasons the China real estate market is so hot is because wealthy Chinese are buying up property to hold onto real assets, rather than put money in low yielding bank bonds and volatile equities. The super rich are buying real estate outside of China in an effort to avoid taxes.

In the past six months, Chinese spent 1.3 billion yuan ($200 million) through Colliers’ international property department, with Canada, the UK and Australia topping list. “We are expecting a clear increase in the extent of mainland buyers’ purchases of overseas properties this year because of the government’s rigorous restraint on the number of homes a family can buy in key cities,” Alan Liu, managing director of Colliers International, said in China Daily Tuesday.

Chinese demand has pushed the average price of a Vancouver home up 12% in 2010 and is expected to rise another 3% this year, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Demand from mainland immigrants now accounts for 29% of all new homes in Vancouver, China Daily reports.

In London, China buyers accounted for 28% of all prime London property sales and 54% by sales value in the prime central London area, where houses go for 5 million pounds ($8 million) on average, according to a recent report by Savills research.

“If the money from China were to start flowing into London at the same rate it does from billionaires in other countries, we would expect the value of ultra-prime London properties to grow by as much as 15%,” Yolande Barnes, head of Savills residential research told China Daily. “The issue at present is that Chinese buyers aren’t taking, or can’t take, their money out of China.”

The biggest increase in global billionaires since 2007 has occurred in China and Russia. The oligarchs from the old USSR account for 15% of prime London real estate by value. Chinese billionaires have yet to have a real impact, accounting for just 3% so far, but that is expected to change as China’s uber-rich discover new ways to invest offshore.

via Where Rich Chinese Are Buying Real Estate – Forbes.

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Oct
10

Redfin pulls agent Scouting Reports | Inman News

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Redfin

 

 

 

 

Seattle-based brokerage Redfin has pulled the plug on agent “Scouting Reports” it rolled out last week in 14 markets and part of Atlanta, saying there are inherent problems in the multiple listing service data the reports were based on that weren’t easy to fix.Holes in the data — often created when agents work informally in teams, or don’t inform the MLS when an out-of-town agent represented a buyer in a deal — meant that consumers weren’t always getting the complete deal history and performance metrics for every real estate agent, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in a blog post.”Only a tiny fraction of transactions weren’t accounted for, but it would have been enough to destroy our credibility if we had insisted on keeping Scouting Report live,” Kelman wrote in an email to company employees reposted on the company’s blog. “Had the data been accurate we’d have defended ourselves from MLS and agent complaints till hell froze over, but in the absence of accuracy we have no defense.”Redfin announced Friday it was suspending publication of the reports in Phoenix over accuracy concerns, and in Washington D.C., over licensing issues. On Monday, the company said it was suspending the reports in the San Francisco East Bay area, in Atlanta, and in Sacramento, Calif.”I don’t know when Scouting Report will see the light of day again, though I am hopeful that if we allow any agent to curate her own profile, we will resolve many of the inaccuracies,” Kelman said today. “In the meantime, we’ll use some of the data to tell consumers when a Redfin agent has worked with another agent before.”Kelman predicted that some of Redfin’s competitors “will dance on Scouting Report’s grave and say, ‘I told you so.’ I certainly feel frustrated that I wasn’t more thoughtful in launching the service; a beta program involving our partners would have avoided all sorts of problems.”Phoenix-based broker Jay Thompson, who had defended Redfin’s right to make agent performance data public if it could be presented accurately and in context, was the first to comment on Kelman’s announcement.”I applaud you for trying,” Thompson wrote on the Redfin company blog. “I suspect this won’t be the last time we see someone, somewhere, generate a ‘Scouting Report.’ ”

via Redfin pulls agent Scouting Reports | Inman News.

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