International buyers are pulling back from the U.S. housing market, as high mortgage rates, soaring home prices, a meager supply of homes for sale and a strong dollar all make the purchases much less financially attractive.
From April of last year to this March, international buyers bought roughly 84,600 homes; that’s the lowest number since the National Association of Realtors began tracking such purchases in 2009 and a 14% drop from the year before.
And while overseas buyers bought fewer homes, they paid more for them. The median price of homes they purchased was $396,400, the highest the Realtors ever recorded.
China, Mexico, Canada, India and Colombia were the top five countries of origin for international buyers of existing homes by number of houses, not dollar volume. The survey does not count new construction, where international buyers are also active.
Chinese buyers had the highest average purchase price, at $1.23 million, likely because a third of them bought in California, where home prices are highest. In total, 15% percent of foreign buyers bought homes worth more than a million dollars.
“Home purchases from Chinese buyers increased after China relaxed the world’s strictest pandemic lockdown policy, while buyers from India were helped by the country’s strong GDP growth,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, in a release. “A stronger Mexican peso against the U.S. dollar likely contributed to the rise in sales from Mexican buyers.”
While foreign sales dropped overall, Chinese purchases did make sizable gains. The total of 2023 Chinese home purchases is the highest since 2018, which was one of the peak years for Chinese international property purchasing, according to Juwai IQI, an Asia-based international real estate technology group.
“Only about one in every 10 Chinese buyers is purchasing purely as an investment, which is a big change from the mid-2010s, when wealthy Chinese consumers looked to diversify their wealth out of China,” said Kashif…
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