Chinese Property Investment Set to Surge
08-10-2014
China Money
Companies that specialise in helping Chinese buyers invest in Australian property say business is booming on the back of a surge of new clients from their target market.
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Ausin Group (Finance), which provides property and mortgage broking services to Chinese clients in Australia, expects home sales to surge by two-thirds and says loans for buyers will double during the upcoming year as a result of the ongoing rise in demand from the PRC.
Ausin’s Sydney-based managing director Joseph Zaja told Fairfax that the company expects to log $1.5 billion in new residential property sales in the year ending June 30, as compared to the figure of $900 million posted in the preceding 12 months.
Mortgages arranged by Ausin via Australian banks are expected to rise to $500 million during the 2015 calendar year.
Zaja said surging demand from China is “here to stay” with no signs yet of a slow down in the country’s outbound property investment trend.
Chinese investors emerged as the biggest buyers of Australia property in the year ended June 2013, beating out the Americans with $5.9 billion of spending on commercial and residential property. This figure marked a 42 per cent gain on the preceding year.
Ausin, which was founded in 2009, focuses on catering to China’s rapidly expanding class of nouveau riche, with 11 offices throughout the country. The company believes this demographic is a lucrative source of clients, pointing out that the average price of the properties purchased by Chinese buyers in Australia is $630,000.
During the five years since its founding, Ausin has seen a sea change in the attitude of lenders toward overseas investors. Whereas banks were previously only willing to finance developments of which less than 30 per cent would be sold to foreign investors, Zaja said this figure has now risen to 100 per cent in some cases.
According to Zaja, the big banks no longer feel that overseas investors are a significantly greater risk than local buyers, with under 1.5 per cent of Ausin’s own clients unable to finish their purchases.
Ausin, which began its mortgage brokering operations last year, arranges home loans from local banks for roughly 93 per cent of its clients, with an average borrowing level of 70 per cent of the value of the property under purchase.