L.A. Times: "Caravans of cash-rich Chinese look for foreclosures & other bargain properties to buy"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Chinese tour groups go house-hunting in U.S.
By Don Lee and David Pierson
December 7, 2008

Reporting from Shanghai -- Caravans of cash-rich Chinese in Hummers and Lincoln Navigators have been weaving through American neighborhoods in recent months, looking for foreclosures and other bargain properties to buy.

With housing prices crashing in the U.S., home-buying trips to America are becoming one of the more popular tour group packages in China. New U.S. visa rules for Chinese tourists and a loosening of foreign investment policies by China have made it easier for people such as Zhao Hongjun of Beijing to go house hunting across the Pacific.

The 48-year-old owner of a media company went on a two-week road trip through the U.S. last fall, visiting scenic sites and checking out properties from Los Angeles to New York. He's been following the swoon in prices ever since, and next month he's considering joining another prospecting group that is heading for San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, three of the hardest-hit housing markets in the U.S.

Zhao's budget: $1 million.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/asia/la-fi-chinahomes7-2008dec07,0,3055086.story

[Greyhound]

1. As in every economic crisis, the parasites come in and buy up assets at a fraction of their worth.

That's why we have to have the boom-bust cycle.

[Cleita]

2. Back in the eighties property boom, it was the Japanese and Saudis.

Maybe we should have laws making it harder for foreigners to buy up our land and businesses.

[Bobbieo]

4. Aren't Americans guilty of the same tactics. I think the whole process is a disgrace

no matter who dies it!!!

[Cleita]

5. Yes, we have been in the past, but nowadays we just invade a country and

take what we want. Buying things is so passe.

I think we really need to sit down at the table and come up with laws for trade and just how much we will allow foreign interests into our economic mix and just how much property they can buy. One way of stifling that would be to increase property taxes for out of staters, any state and that includes foreigners, to 10%. In California the residents pay only 1%. That will cool down any real estate boom from overseas and it will help with our budget deficit problem.

[itsrobert]

7. Yup

A few years ago, California investors were buying property in Texas, especially El Paso. It raised the property values quite a bit. Also, the expansion of Fort Bliss played a role in it.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

3. Reminds me of

Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash, in which a foundering United States winds up franchising most of continental North America, and citizens must acquire passports to drive from one business's parking lot to another.

[ClarkUSA]

6. Flush Irish have been snapping up properties in NYC for the past four years

What's wrong with it? God knows this country needs the money.

[lpbk2713]

8. New era carpet baggers.

Who knew? :shrug: