Purchases by Chinese, Canadian, and British buyers have collapsed. Foreign buyers matter in some key submarkets.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Home purchases in the US by foreign buyers – both nonresident foreign buyers and foreign buyers who reside in the US – fell again in the 12-month period through March and have collapsed by 76% from the peak in 2017, to just 67,100 homes (red line in the chart). During the peak year through March 2017, foreign buyers had purchased 284,500 homes.
Purchases by foreign buyers who lived in the US plunged by 77% from the peak to 37,600 homes (dotted blue line). Purchases by foreign buyers who lived overseas plunged by 75% from the peak to 29,500 (double green line).
The record low in the annual reports on foreign buyers by the National Association of Realtors, going back to 2009, occurred in 2024.
Foreign buyers are concentrated in a subset of markets in the US, where they can play a substantial role.
Buyers from Canada were #1 with 10,700 home purchases in the 12-month period, though these purchases have collapsed by 84% from 69,100 homes at the peak in the data in 2010. And they were down by 46% from 2019.
Canadians spent an average of $486,000 per home.
The report does not provide data on foreign owners who sold their US homes. But from the sporadic reporting on sometimes desperate sales last year and this year by Canadians who’d had it up to here with the US, one might venture to guess that Canadians turned into net-sellers.
Buyers from Mexico purchased 9,400 homes in the 12-month period through March, down by 69% from the peak of 30,100 homes in 2010 and down from 15,900 homes in 2019. They spent an average of $532,000 per home.
Buyers from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan purchased 7,400 homes in the 12-month period, largely concentrated in some areas of California.
Purchases have collapsed by 82% from the peak of 40,600 in 2017. Back in 2010, when Canadian and Mexican purchases peaked, Chinese buyers were still climbing the ladder.
But they spent on average $1.03 million per home, given the sky-high home prices in their favored California markets. And so in dollar-terms, at $7.6 billion, they were #1 in the 12-month period.
All major US brokerage firms actively pitch US homes to buyers in China. Compass promotes US homes in China through via its Mandarin website Compass China and Mandarin-speaking agents in the US. Compass acquired Anywhere Advisors, the parent of Coldwell Banker, Century 21, and Sotheby’s, that also pitch US homes in China. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices entered China at the peak in 2017 via a marketing agreement with Juwai.com, to pitch US homes to buyers in China. Back in 2017 and 2018, the sky was still the limit.
Buyers from India purchased 6,000 homes, down by 65% from the peak of 17,300 homes in 2015 and from 9,700 homes in 2019.
They spent an average of $617,000 per home as the buying is concentrated in expensive tech areas of the US.
Buyers from the UK purchased 2,700 homes, spending on average $444,000 per home. Their purchases have collapsed by 90% from the peak of 27,100 homes in 2010.
By market, the biggest three states accounted for about 50% of the foreign purchases: Florida remained #1 with a share of 20% of foreign purchases. California was #2, with a share of 19% of foreign purchases. And Texas was #3 with a share of 12% of foreign purchases.
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Once the moratorium to buy Canadians homes in Vancouver Toronto other big Canadian cities is over next year. People from China will buy fewer homes in the USA
Their purchases already collapsed. So they’ll go to zero? Prolly not
Not likely going to happen. That’s the last thing the Federal Liberals and Socialist BC government need – it works diametrically opposite to their B.S. goal of affordable housing.
There should be no schemes or bailouts for developers ever.
This is surprising news to me.
If you want America for Americans, this is a good thing.
The slump has been going on for nearly 10, regardless of Biden or Trump in the White House.
I agree. With the looming AI / job crisis, it’s time to sunset H1B & L1B visas. We might want to get out ahead of this.
And which Americans are the ones benefitting the most in this economy?
Those inside or outdide the moat that has been created?
It helps lower demand which will eventually lead to further price declines. You’re either going to get enough price declines for WAY HIGHER FOR LONGER than anyone really wants or through a recession. Continued low demand is part of the first, less economic devastation, option.
Looks similar to the overall trend, so I don’t expect that there is no special impact here.
haha I am sure we will get someone pointing out not applicable to Irvine, even though the decline can be seen in California..
Bay Area homes are unfordable to people working here, even in tech. Many homes held by faceless Chinese nationals, from whom you rent via middlemen.
Yes, Chinese are probably the majority buyers. But as Wolf mentioned, other nationalities also buy in significant numbers. Regardless of nationality, it sucks that foreigner purchases are allowed to make housing affordability worse.
Of course, there are far bigger problems which affect affordability. E.g. ZIRP, Institutional buyers, Airbnbs, Regulations etc. But, lets not make it worse by letting foreign buyers have a free for all here.
There is something to be said about reciprocity. Americans can and do buy far more homes in foreign countries than foreigners buy homes in the US.
I hope that the AI bubble’s detonation will be what finally fixes the bay area housing market – but everyone’s been waiting for that for 20 years. Then all the bay area refugees we have here in Sacramento can go back there and obliterate our housing market as well, and then we’ll finally have some leverage over the landlords. I can dream!
Following that, we’ll have to work on strengthening our reputation as a hot, arid cow-town on a savannah that nobody associates with California. As I write this, it’s 97F and I have a vulture circling me. You don’t want to be here!
I also look forward to watching the AI bubble collapse here in Wisconsin.
At this time it seems like they are eyeing every 2 horse town in the area to build a 500 acre data center. Rents and SFH are thru the roof.
We do have plenty of water (floods here every year now). But where O where will they find the electricity to run a data center ?
My suspicion about the Canadian market is a 10% anxiety about politics, 30% the collapse in prices of the Canadian residential market and 60% the value of the Canadian Dollar, which peaked vs the USD at the same time that Canadian purchases in the US did.
As a dual citizen now living back in my birth country Canada, I fully agree.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the current President is through and the exchange rate drops to 1.25 area.
I would say it is more than a 10% concern about the current state of ….if you want to call it politics. I have two nephews and one niece in the US. They have all started the process of obtaining their Canadian citizenship due to their lineage. They are all professionals and together have 6 children. They figure it will take 6 more months to complete. The reasons they cite are also medical coverage, and the cost of post secondary education. This summer two of the kids came to visit. One has already toured UBC and has researched his options. He is in grade 11 and will apply when his citizenship comes through.
BBC Headline from May: Thousands of ‘lost Canadians’ have applied for dual citizenship – is Canada ready?
Total Backlog: Roughly 50,900 pending applications for proof of Canadian citizenship are currently in the queue with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).Recent Volume: In a single multi-week surge following the rollout of the updated descent rules, Canada received over 12,000 citizenship-by-descent applications
and: Eligible Population: An estimated 3 million Americans in regions like New England alone may qualify under the expanded rules due to historical migration patterns.
“The reasons they cite are also medical coverage, and the cost of post secondary education.”
If they are professionals (?) and in reasonable health, I am confident the lower salaries in Canada will far offset any outlays on education, especially if considering the value of the degree (reputation and network).
I have been kicked out of Leafland permanently,was riding with a motorcycle group and hanging in Montreal,was at the Le Brique club(rock place for most part)got into a fight with off duty Leaf cops,fight kept on with on duty cops.
No charges brought as would have looked bad for cops as off duty ones started….,plus,until swarmed we certainly had th e upper hand…..,good times!
Sent out of country and told never welcome/come back which was just fine as things got a bit out of hand in Montreal in the 90’s with bike groups and all.
Since we just making shit up here, I will put my 2 cents in as an Eastern Canadian of the right age (retired) and income to be a snow bird. My parents generation loved the idea of heading down to buy property in Florida to escape in winter, and many did. Now the story I hear from almost everyone is that they will not buy or even visit Florida (or any other state) until the political situation has changed. These people are not hampered by the drop in real estate in Canada. For the snowbird cohort, those places were paid off many years ago, and the exchange rate has dropped but not enough to make much of a difference.
Hi Mitch,
As I read your comments I was reminded of Jack Nicholson’s observation about women, reason and emotion in the movie ‘As Good as It Gets’.
So let strip out the emotion and rationally examine the data Wolf shared. What are the implications for home prices in the US as a result of the decreased number of foreign buyers? What percentage of overall home sales are to foreign buyers?
Your post did remind me that letting emotional considerations affect my investment decisions has not been a positive for my net worth.
Good luck and best regards to all.
@OBC great post, part of the reason I love Wolf’s work is that he is great at “stripping out the emotion”. I was wondering what @MitchV means when he writes “until the political situation has changed”. As most of the media has gone partisan the only thing that changes are the media outlets calling the president crazy. When I push people to tell me what specifically has changed in FL since the president changes I usually get a blank stare…
“What percentage of overall home sales are to foreign buyers?”
In the key markets where foreign buyers are concentrated, they have a substantial impact.
The comment was by a fictional character and was an insulting one-liner, not Jack Nicholson’s personal observation. But many here probably internalized it as a personal belief.
Plenty of women are buying homes alone, not wasting time like the young lost male population living at home and plotting to shoot up a mall or beat up immigrants who buy homes. Keep your “observations” to yourself.
Good luck trying to wait it out – FL is unlikely to be a left-leaning state soon, given differential migration, so will not be congenial to Canadians. Anecdotally, a friend of mine recently moved there from the NYC metro and loves it. The only downside he says is that everything grows too fast (more gardening) and HOAs are more hardcore about enforcing property standards. But this at least means the neighborhoods look nice.
Not so fast CSH:
Based on the latest data: ” The latest figures from the Florida Division of Elections, reflecting the July 20 book closing, show Republicans with 5.6 million active registered voters, compared to 4.06 million Democrats. Another 3.32 million voters are registered with no party affiliation, while roughly 496,000 are affiliated with a minor political party. ”
Registered Republicans are far from a majority in FL, as opposed to there being more of them than Democrats.
And FL has done in the past, and likely will do once again, some rather large shifts in voting patterns.
Also keep in mind that Morgan has begun the process of forming a new party, and besides being the largest injury attorney, he has a lot of friends and might quickly attract a lot of the NPA folx from both directions from center.
Especially if both ”parties” continue with the very clear divisive tactics of recent years.
Then stay where you are. No one will miss you.
Say that to the businesses on the border state, USA tourism, etc.
See what they have to say…
Your provincial world point of view is the issue.
BTW, I’m a dual USA CANADIAN citizen. So no assumptions ok?
Cheers from Canada. See in far more in 2029.
Should change my name here to Humansforsanity.
Agree. Now get them out of land ownership.
Who will cook, clean, build, drive, etc. ? I hope you joking.
A large factor is also that the relative difficulty and cost of long distance air travel has made RV snowboarding less attractive. Why go to the rio grande valley when you can easily and cheaply go to Thailand or Puerto Vallarta?
Too many Canadians are brainwashed by the CBC/CTV which are in the Federal Liberal pockets. CBC/CTV and all the other socialist rags/government mouthpieces have done more damage to Canadians, especially the boomers that believe that crap, it’s terrible.
Canadians “sitting on the fence” waiting for things to change to buy ? Idiots I guess. FYI I’m Canadian. The anti-US sentiment sickens me.
Can we get the stats on sales by foreign sellers?
+1000 @Wolf please consider this request.
I already kind of addressed this in the article with this paragraph:
“The report does not provide data on foreign owners who sold their US homes. But from the sporadic reporting on sometimes desperate sales last year and this year by Canadians who’d had it up to here with the US, one might venture to guess that Canadians turned into net-sellers.
NAR does not track sales by foreign owners. I have not heard of anyone who tracks sales by foreign owners.
It also makes the interpretation more difficult. Many foreign buyers likely became citizens during the interim between purchase and sale–my wife did this for example.
This was all new information to me and I find it fascinating.
I totally agree with a commenter in a previous column – real estate is ONLY a losing proposition moving forward. LOSING PROPOSITION. Between nosebleed valuations, ever-increasing taxes and insurance, plus insane maintenance and repair costs, real estate is no longer an investment. It will be return-free risk moving forward – a money loser.
Going to respectfully disagree. Lorenzo. You cannot make universal conclusions as RE is local. All RE is local. Certainly if you jump on any bandwagon in an overpriced market you lose out, but strategic long term purchases do well and I believe will continue to do so.
The main problem is debt and taxes, imho. Insurance is a bitch but you can shop around. I have always lived in a low tax area and do not ‘do’ debt. I can’t sleep at night if I owe money. And our rural area has very low taxes. I noticed recently that a large forestry company has been recently developing 5 acre estate lots in our area using their RE division. These are private lands, not Crown forestry leases. This will now set the benchmark for the entire region. Now, the new arrivals might have paid too much, but that’s their problem being late arrivals. This forestry company has been around for a century in one way or another.
A rental B&B might be pretty dumb these days, but if you could pick up a vacation cottage in a place not yet discovered…… you will do just fine. I think it just depends on where you are? Plus, long term geographic/demographic trends linked to climate change will be huge going forward.
Would you say this if you had property near the Oregon coast?
“It will be return-free risk moving forward”
Well if there is no possibility of a return there can’t be risk.
Hah going to show my friends wife as she’s a Chinese national and bought in 2021 for 1.2M. Almost spot on.
I’ll let her know that 1 home she stole from an American :)
Doesn’t seem like they are actually that big of an influence overall like what 6% at the peak now down to 1% or less?
1. If your friend’s wife is a US citizen or green card holder, she is a US Person, and NOT part of these figures. “Resident foreign buyers” are those on a visa, such as an H-1b visa, a tourist visa, a student visa, or similar.
2. Foreign buyers have a substantial impact in the key markets where they’re concentrated
Thanks for the info neither of them are us citizens.
Still looks like a low amount vs the total sold per year.
They are really heavily concentrated in certain desirable school districts, for example. That’s the kind of local we are talking that can impact prices.
Anything to reduce demand and therefore prices of regular housing is good at this point. The Fed distorted the market for 15 years and it’s going to take as many for it to get back where it should be. Flat prices from 2022-2035+ so that regular people can buy houses with 30% of their income at regular mortgage rates of 7-9%.
“Flat prices from 2022-2035+ ”
Prices already falling in most of USA.
Once hot market like Austin down 27% from its peak.
Hi jon,
About Austin, TX, are you sure?
https://www.zillow.com/home-values/10221/austin-tx/
Yes, even your link says prices dropped 5% from 1 year ago. But the downturned started in June 2022, so 4 years ago, and it has come quite a ways. Here is the long-term view of mid-tier home prices, also Zillow data, first chart in this article, prices declined 27% from the June 2022 peak:
https://wolfstreet.com/2026/07/17/home-prices-in-33-big-expensive-cities-in-america-25-fell-year-over-year-in-june-2-rose-to-new-highs/
Yes, I mean the same price in 2035 as 2022. Zero appreciation. In a world of 3-4% inflation thirteen years of nothing is painful.
The people who paid absolute maximum top dollar in the pandemic era aren’t going to be happy in the 2030s-2040s when they walk away from closing with a couple thousand bucks at best.
There must be some way for the Treasury Department to “sanction” Chinese real estate so that the Chinese sell out.
Sincerely, which foreign guy would eagerly buy a home in US with this Administration, right now ?
And especially if you are a resident you start making comparisons with your homeland or other countries.
Numbers are exactly telling this.
No one is complaining (other than sellers). But people massively complained about foreign buying driving up home prices in those markets where they bought, back in 2017/18. Even right here in the comments. So this trend helps in rebalancing the out-of-whack US housing market.
Thank God, Foreigners buying US homes is the last thing we need for housing affordability.
I support banning outright foreign ownership of homes/land in USA like in many other countries.
It seems that then entire world realizes that the US housing market is too expensive now.
Sure, whatever you say…
OutWest
Yeah, I suppose what I said is pure conjecture. I am sure there are a variety of other reasons that so many fewer people are buying US homes including US citizens and foreigners.
I have nothing to back up that crazy statement except the beer I was drinking.
Hi Huck,
Just curious but where is the data to support your contention? It seems to AI at least the ‘entire world realizes’ statement is not verifiable and in large meadure contradictory.
Personally, in our household, if I need an opinion, my wife will tell me what it is? I hope you’re not in that category but I can’t help wondering who or what is programming yours.
Huck is standing in an empty room all by himself – there is only one other thing in the room – a massive bull elephant. Housing price levels in the U.S. are that obviously overvalued. You can’t miss it unless you’re blind. I’m hoping that Huck agrees with my assessment of the situation. BTW: neither AI nor my wife had any say in this – just me and the elephant in the room.
OBC…
I may be in that category that you described.
Haha
Hmm. When AI contradicts some commentors statements, which would you believe?
About commercial traffiv across the Blue Water Bridge linking Sarnia, ON and Port Huron, for instance, AI sez:
Overall traffic between Sarnia and Port Huron is not falling. While passenger car and tourism traffic saw temporary dips due to economic and political friction, commercial truck volume at the Blue Water Bridge has surged so significantly that it recently surpassed the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit to become the busiest commercial trade corridor on the Canada-U.S. border.
It’s the difference in opinions that make horse racing the sport of kings.
So those are the purchase numbers. What about the liquidations? I asked AI about this for Canadians just last week, and it said the Canadians had indeed been liquidating. I may have got back some rough numbers, but I promptly forgot them.
From Gemini AI:
“Foreign Sellers Profile: NAR collects data on foreign clients selling U.S. properties, tracking client origin, property type, location, and key financial factors. Canadians consistently rank as one of the largest single groups of foreign sellers in the U.S.”
This would imply that NAR has the numbers, but not that they have ever released them.
Its good that President Trump is deporting all the illegals because some of them are buying homes in the US, and if they are gone from here, prices will come down as well as crime.
Yes but they got the money to buy the homes by wait for it working and providing production. Americans in many cases are not working and if they are they are not as productive at least in manual labor. So there will be a price to pay in inflation and also in supply constrant of that labor. IE hopefully you any of your loved ones dont need sombody to wipe your you know what due to ageing or health issues. Guess which crowd will be the 1st to cry…….POPCORN out.