Foreign buyers have pulled back sharply on their purchases of U.S. homes, according to a report Wednesday from the National Association of Realtors.
Foreign buyers purchased $77.9 billion worth of existing homes between April 2018 and March 2019, a decline of 36 percent from the prior 12 months. Foreign buyers who didn’t set up residency and recent immigrants to the U.S. showed similar declines.
The number of homes purchased fell from 266,800 to 183,100. The average price paid was $426,100. Chinese residents, the biggest foreign buyers in the U.S. the past seven years, cut their purchases by 56 percent.
“A confluence of many factors — slower economic growth abroad, tighter capital controls in China, a stronger U.S. dollar and a low inventory of homes for sale — contributed to the pullback of foreign buyers,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, in a release. “However, the magnitude of the decline is quite striking, implying less confidence in owning a property in the U.S.”
Florida, popular with Canadians; California, popular with the Chinese; and Texas, popular with buyers from India and Mexico, are the three states where foreign buyers are most active. Arizona, New Jersey, North Carolina, Illinois, New York and Georgia are after them.
Colorado accounted for only 1 percent of foreign home purchases the past 12 months. The number of home sales to foreign buyers dropped from 2,700 to 1,800, said Quintin Simmons, a spokesman for the NAR.
