China's rich look abroad as home prices fall, others stay put

Minority view

"The choice of the rich is the view of a minority. We do not think it represents a trend for the masses in future," said Zhao Dazhen, a property analyst at CEBM Group, an investment research firm in Shanghai.

"Market uncertainty is keeping most people on the sidelines. Potential buyers will be back once there are signs of a recovery."

Data appear to confirm that analysis, with new yuan deposits nearly tripling in June to 3.8 trillion, the biggest jump in at least 12 months. The central bank's second-quarter consumer survey also showed property has not lost its appeal: 14 percent of households said they wanted to buy a new home, roughly the same as a year ago.

By contrast, the rich, investment advisers at their side, increasingly choose to shift their money elsewhere in search for better returns rather than wait for prices to level off.

China's wealthy have dabbled in foreign real estate in the past and fears that the market has gone too are also not exactly new.

What is new is a growing sense that despite a pick-up in home sales volumes last month, the second monthly decline in prices in June might be the beginning of a longer slide.

Well-heeled investors are also shifting funds abroad faster than ever. Realtors in New York, Sydney or London all report how over the past year Chinese buyers became top foreign investors in their markets, snapping up high-end prestige properties.

Data from the National Association of Realtors, a US trade association, showed that the Chinese accounted for about 16 percent of foreign home buyers in the United States in the year ending March 2014, up from 12 percent in 2013 and 2012.

Compared with the size of the domestic property market - 8.1 trillion yuan ($1.3 trillion) in sales last year -- outflows are still relatively small and a central bank probe into an offshore investment scheme offered by one of China's major banks might curb investor appetite for foreign assets.

For optimists the limited scale of the foreign property investment and firm belief of many Chinese that a home remains the best store of value suggest that China's housing market is in a "natural correction" rather than on the brink of a slump.

Ease in housing prices spreads across nation	Realty heading for market consolidation