Developers and agents hoping to sell to Chinese property investors can look forward to another bumper year, according to a round-up of expert opinion in the UK’s Financial Times

The report in the FT says that transaction volumes globally are expected to rise by 15% this year to $600bn, a large part of which is down to a rise in Chinese investments. In evidence they cite:

• Knight Frank predicting a ‘seismic’ rise in money leaving Asia, including a doubling of Chinese money flowing into international property by the end of 2014.

• Property brokers in Manhattan saying that in April the Chinese took over from the Russians as the biggest foreign buyers of apartments there.

• The MD of a London property investment firm saying that China’s appetite for UK property was like the Irish and Icelandic demands in the recent past. (This is not, however, entirely a cause for optimism the paper suggests.)

• Another expert, this one Richard Gwilliam from M&G, pointing out that though the Chinese investment is huge, it is still only 5% of the market: “Global property is not over-reliant on
Chinese buyers and investors have little reason to worry.”

The report concludes by saying that fund managers seem comfortable with the situation, while wary of China’s economy in general.

In a separate report out in the past week, the Immigration and Chinese High Net Worth Individuals 2014 white paper notes that China’s super-rich are desperate to move abroad.

Nearly two-thirds of HNWI with personal wealth of at least 6m yuan (US$960,000) have expressed a desire to emigrate. And of those who have already moved or are in the process of it, another two-thirds say they are considering taking foreign citizenship.

73% wish to move to North America (see table below), with LA, San Francisco and Vancouver the top choices. As we often hear, children’s education, escaping China’s pollution and worries over food safety were the main reasons to emigrate, said the report.

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