This fall in Hawaii, the people over at LA bound Affinity China will be hosting hundreds of affluent Chinese looking for a piece of real estate in the U.S.  Countries around the world are watching affluent Chinese gobble up property, most of it prime-time.  In some countries, this will have ramifications on social services — as is the case in places like New Zealand — and Canada, as the eastern cities take in a new flux of buyers from Vancouver.

Taylor, an Australian, has been dividing his time between Shanghai and Hong Kong for the past six and a half years. He tells me the same thing everyone helping the Chinese buy international properties will tell you, that for the most part they are buying for their children’s future, in cities with good colleges, good value for housing, and in places that offer a good lifestyle.

“Our neighbor has a two year old daughter and every holiday they go to Australia and New Zealand,” he tells me. “They go there for vacation, but part of that vacation includes scouring the city and countryside looking for properties. That’s where they want her to go to school.  The rich Chinese don’t want the stock market. It is too volatile. They don’t want gold. They were bitten by the gold bug two years ago and I think that’s over,” he says.

Remember that scene in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” where Charlie Brown asks Lucy what she wants for Christmas? She says all she really wants for Christmas is real estate. That’s what the Chinese want. It’s become a nation full of Lucy Van Pelts.

According to the National Realtors Association, China accounted for 12% of all non-U.S. buyers of California real estate in March 2013. They paid an average of $425,000 for it. That’s more than the average sales price on an American home as of June, which was $214,000, according to the Association. It’s also more than the average California home, which Zillow puts at $365,000.

In the same month, further away across the Pacific Ocean in Singapore, China accounted for 34% of the foreign property market, according to U.K. real estate consultancy Knight Frank. Nearby Maylasia, No. 2 in the foreign buyer camp, accounted for just 11.4%. China’s numbers in Singapore have been on the rise so much that the government is curbing foreign buying of housing.

“China sees real estate as their best store of wealth. And some countries are desperate for buyers,” says Taylor.

Each year, over 80 million Chinese are traveling abroad. A small portion of them are looking for real estate.

The top countries that Chinese want to buy a second home are The United States, The United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Cyprus, Portugal, Thailand.  

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