Wealthy chinese are so enraptured by the beauty and open space of Sydney Harbour that they are buying up harbourside property like no-one else. Nearly a half of harbourside Mosman house sales over $3 million have gone to the chinese. Steadily the chinese are moving in along Sydney Harbour. Hong Kong Harbour here we come!
Not only are chinese in China being encouraged to snap up the best Australia property particularly in urban Australia, Australian real estate agents like Andrew Taylor of online real estate website Juwai.com in Shanghai, heavily promote Australian property directly to chinese investors and to chinese (wannabe) migrants.
Taylor says chinese demand for urban residential particularly in Sydney is soaring, up 370 per cent from 2012 to 2013, lured by Australian Labor and Liberal government policies encouraging foreign investment, selling Australia’s education and health systems and Australia’s waterfront lifestyle to wealthy foreigners like the chinese.
According to Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board, chinese bought up more than $5 billion in Australia property in 2013.
Chinese-owned global property developer Greenland Holdings, plans to increase its investment in Australian residential property by 50 per cent a year and is bidding for the second stage of the $6 billion Barangaroo urban regeneration project on Sydney Harbour.
He said Greenland was looking for commercial and residential business opportunities in all capital cities, but that Sydney and Melbourne would be the initial focus to tap into and to encourage larger chinese populations in these cities.
And it is this driving foreign demand for residential that is driving up Sydney property prices beyond the reach of Sydney families. Local first home buyers have been price-forced out of the Sydney residential market by wealthy foreigners. Sydneysider families have been split up as offspring are forced to leave Sydney and Melbourne for distant affordable housing out in the regions, only to cop daily 4-hour motorway commutes.
The betrayal gets worse. In New South Wales under Labor and perpetuated under the Libs, foreign buyers of newly constructed homes in New South Wales have been receiving the first home owners grant of $5,000.
Foreigners are getting a financial leg up by our own elected politicians!
Under the Liberal Party’s New Home Owner Scheme introduced in the 2012 state budget, buyers can own multiple homes in their country of origin and still apply for the grant for the purchase of Australian properties. They don’t have to live in it. All they have to do is apply through the foreign investment review board to buy.
As we all know, Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board, is pro-foreigner and rarely questions.
New Premier Mike Baird has recently confessed that if overseas buyers buy 20 off-the-plan apartments, they can apply for 20 $5000 grants funded by NSW taxpayers. Baird is well aware that this policy is shutting out Australian first-time buyers.
Local real estate sharks are not shy at cashing in, like Ray White Real Estate, LJ Hooker, and McGrath’s, each of which has set up Chinese offices and specific trade shows to flog off Aussie homes to the chinese in China.
And it is not just the chinese investors. Most immigrants to Australia are now chinese, thanks mainly to Rudd/Gillard immigration inducement to chinese as part of their “Asian Century”. In 2013, over 27,000 chinese immigrated to Australia, equating to adding a town a year the population of Gladstone, Bega, Warrnambool, Devonport or Geraldton. But they all settle in inner Sydney and inner Melbourne.