During these years the Chinese government began to apply limits on housing purchases, which has cooled down property markets in the country's major cities with transaction volume sharply declining. The limits on prices and purchases have stifled investors, forcing them redirect their money from the domestic market to overseas.

These investors have thus transferred their speculative capital to overseas housing markets, mainly in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe and Southeast Asia. Cash that has been diverted due to the housing limits in China has been estimated at 400 billion yuan (US$62.7 billion). Yet how much of it is going abroad is unclear.

In the past six months, the China branch of Colliers International, a Taiwan-based company offering property services, has completed investment of over 130 million yuan (US$20.37 million) in overseas property with Vancouver as one of its main targets. Other locations include Britain, Australia, the United States, Germany, and Singapore.

An overseas property manager at DTZ, a global real estate consultancy, indicated that there are differences in market environment, purchase restrictions and regulations between different countries. If Chinese investors hold the same thinking in making purchases abroad as they do when buying at home — namely, that profits are gained as long as the purchases are made — the investors buying overseas property may not necessarily end up making a fortune, the manager said.

A Chinese media outlet commented that it has become a trend for China people to invest in real estate abroad on the one hand due to the restrictions on domestic housing purchases and on the other the advantageous environment for property markets abroad. Either out of need or for speculation, what makes these buyers decide to stay or go abroad is how the domestic housing market will go.

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