Chinese investors not giving up on Canadian property any time soon—report

International property investments by Chinese buyers exceeded $100 billion last year

Chinese investors not giving up on Canadian property any time soon—report
Attesting to the sustained desirability of the segment, Chinese investment in Canadian real estate grew by more than 25 per cent year-over-year in 2016, according to a recent analysis by Juwai.com.

The Chinese international property portal—which draws over 2 million visitors a year—found that mainland investors have spent over US$100 billion on overseas property investments in 2016, the Vancouver Sun reported.

This estimate includes transactions by corporate and individual buyers, using data from the website’s own servers along with industry and government information.

Canada was one of the five favourite destinations among Chinese property investors, after the U.S., Australia, and Hong Kong.

Juwai noted that based on the information that its users search for most frequently, 2017 is slated to become “another near-record year for Chinese outbound property investment, although flows will likely be lower than in 2016.”

However, it hastened to add that “[despite] its torrid pace of overseas acquisitions in the last decade, China has been buying for such a short period of time that its investors have only accumulated a relatively small stock of overseas property and other foreign assets.”

The Juwai report came in the wake of new data released by the B.C. government, which showed that as of May 2017, foreign buyers accounted for 3.1 per cent of the total value of property transactions in Metro Vancouver, and 6 per cent across the province.


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