Attention on South Florida real estate is heating up from foreign investors thanks to falling home prices and the weak dollar.
As investment opportunities, foreign buyers have always been interested in certain U.S. markets, such as high-end Miami Beach real estate properties as well as properties in Manhattan.
However, professionals in the real estate industry have reported increased international interest in a much larger range of properties; from $60,000 single-family homes in South Florida's inland neighborhoods to $1 million waterfront villas located just miles from the Canadian border in Washington State.
Almost or 18% or one in five, realtors surveyed by the National Association of Realtors last year said they sold homes to international clients between April 2006 and April 2007. More recent data isn’t available yet but according to subjective evidence, those numbers continue to rise.
Mark Partin, president of Trailridge Property Corporation in Toronto which brokers deals between U.S. developers and Canadian investors interested in buying residential properties in "bulk” says, "there’s definitely more interest in U.S. properties, no question about it."
For many foreign buyers, property in the U.S. is cheap. Foreign buyers also seem more optimistic about the long-term health of the U.S. real estate market, says David Michonski, a certified international property specialist and chief executive of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy in New York. "The foreign buyer has an unbridled confidence in the U.S. market that is lacking in the domestic purchaser today," he notes. "They view this as the bargain of a lifetime and are terribly excited about it."
Contributed by MLR Realty
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