According to a report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), foreign buyers spent $77.9 billion on residential purchases from April 2018 to March 2019, which represents a 36% drop from $121 billion during the previous 12-month period. International buyers and sellers of residential real estate bought 183,100 existing homes in the U.S. (3% of all existing home sales) from April 2018 to March 2019. This represents a 31% decrease from the 266,800 existing homes purchased from April 2017 to March 2018, according to the report “Profile of International Transaction in U.S. Residential Real Estate 2019.”
The report focuses on two groups of international buyers and sellers of residential real estate: non-resident foreigners with permanent residences outside the U.S. and resident foreigners (recent immigrants who reside in the U.S. for more than six months). Non-resident foreign buyers purchased $33.2 billion of U.S. existing-home sales during the most recently measured period, a 37 percent decline from the previous level of $53 billion. Resident foreign buyers purchased $44.7 billion of residential property, which is down from $67.9 billion from the previous year, representing a 34% reduction.
During the most recent period measured, the top foreign buyers came from China ($13.4 billion), Canada ($8 billion), India ($6.9 billion), United Kingdom ($3.8 billion), and Mexico ($2.3 billion). The top five most selected states were Florida (20%), California (12%), Texas (10%), Arizona (5%), and New Jersey (4%).
“Rising economic growth improves the spending capability of foreign buyers to purchase a property. After an upsurge in global economic growth in 2016 to 2017, growth slowed to 3.6% in 2018 and is expected to taper to 3.3% in 2019,” report authors Lawrence Yun, chief economist and senior vice president at NAR, and Gay Cororaton, research economist at NAR, wrote in the report. “The slowdown in global growth, tighter controls on the outward flow of capital from China, and low inventory of homes for sale likely account for this huge drop.”
View the full report here.
