By David Thompson, Chief Marketing Officer
Last week while in Hong Kong, I had an amazing meeting with Simon Henry, the co-founder of Juwai.com, the largest news and listings site for Chinese investors to find real estate around the world. Juwai’s property portal helps Chinese mainlanders or expats search for properties, learn about real estate investing and specific market data all in traditional or simplified Chinese.
Simon’s company has researched why Chinese buyers invest abroad and found the main reasons are:
- Diversifying investments
- Immigration reasons
- Supporting foreign education for their children
- Lifestyle and inter-generational wealth building
Here’s more detail from Simon:
And in case you missed those mind-blowing stats on the size of the market for Chinese purchases abroad, here they are again:
- 2010: $5Bn USD
- 2014: $52Bn USD
- 2025: Projected at $220Bn USD
The size of this market for foreign purchases by Chinese nationals, both living on the mainland and abroad, is staggering. As I posted last week, we’re also seeing a huge increase in Chinese bidder activity on Auction.com that reflects the growth Simon talked about. With sites like Juwai.com and Auction.com, real estate is truly becoming a global market place.
Next week, I’ll examine the big political and economic factors behind these huge capital flows from Chinese investors. Watch the full interview with Simon below:
