More than 60% of wealthy Chinese plan to invest in real estate in American cities Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle in the next three years, according to a survey conducted by the magazine Hurun Report and Visas Consulting.
Many of the richest people in the country intend to invest their money in foreign real estate and live abroad due to the fall in the value of the Chinese yuan and an overheated real estate market in China.
The survey involved 240 employees, whose net assets amounted to an average of 27 million yuan during the period from August to October. These people are either already emigrated or planned to do so.
About 56% of wealthy Chinese are concerned about the continuing decline of the Renminbi. The yuan has fallen about 10% against the US dollar since last summer, according to the annual report, released today, 28 November, Hurun Report and Visas Consulting.
Rupert Hoogewerf, lead author of the journal report Hurun Report, said, “the Weakening yuan and concerns about the possible collapse of the property bubble in Chinese cities of the first level made of the wealthiest people in China to treat foreign investment more seriously.”
For five years starting from 2011, housing prices soared by 205% in Shenzhen and by 94% in Shanghai, according to Bloomberg, far ahead of other cities in the world, which also increased the prices of real estate, including San Francisco, London and Los Angeles.
There are about 1.34 million wealthy Chinese with a fortune of 10 million yuan or more. “60% of them — 800,000 people — most likely, investing in property abroad in the coming years,” said Hoogewerf.
USA topped the list of preferred countries for Chinese investment and emigration, followed by UK, Canada, Australia and Singapore.
David Chen, partner Visas Consulting, a global provider of services for immigration, said: “Taking into account children’s education, living conditions and the need to preserve assets, wealthy Chinese almost unanimously focused on North America.” Los Angeles has chosen 17.8% of the respondents. Their number is virtually unchanged from last year. Then there is San Francisco and 13.2 percent, followed by Seattle — 12.8% and new York is 11.6%.
Only 1.1% of respondents chose Hong Kong as the city where they were hoping to move — a sharp decline compared with 2.2% of Chinese who have chosen Hong Kong in the past year.
Survey respondents have already invested about 15% of its assets abroad to reduce the risk, prepare to send children abroad for study or emigration.
Their choice of investment was relatively conservative: it is foreign currency deposits, mutual funds and insurance transactions, the report said.
More than 80% of respondents also invested their money in the purchase of works of art, luxury watches, stamps, wine and vintage cars.
