Florida is the Number One choice for Foreign Buyers
Florida is the Number One choice for Foreign Buyers According to an August 2018 article in Realtor.org, foreigners purchased 288,600 homes in the United States between April 2017 and March 2018 (latest statistics available). Overall, Florida was the top destination, accounting for 19% of purchases. California was second with 14%, followed by Texas with 9%, and Arizona and New York with 5% each.
Among buyers from Canada and Great Britain, Florida was the most popular state for home purchases. Among Chinese, Florida finished third.
Realtor magazine reports that, “Foreign buyers, usually purchase properties that are pricier than the average existing home.” For these buyers, the median price was $292,400; for all existing homes bought by Americans and foreigners combined the median price was $249,300. Chinese purchased the most expensive properties with a median price of a far higher than average, $439,100.
Overseas buyers purchased 22.9 billion of Florida residential real estate last year. The dollar volume of these purchases accounted for 21% of the state’s total compared to 8% nationwide. This represented 13% of homes bought compared to 5% nationally. Interestingly, 67% paid in cash.
South Florida sales in 2018 significantly exceeded other parts of the state among foreign buyers. And 5% bought their property before even visiting the state.
International buyers seem to prefer townhouses and condominiums, as this represented 53% of all purchases – detached homes were preferred by 43%, and 3% purchased other types of properties.
But what about going forward into 2019?
With weakening economies in Europe and China, America’s solid economic growth in 2018 should serve as an added incentive for these buyers in the year ahead with Florida, once again, reaping an outsize percentage of the benefit.
On the national scale, the news agency, Reuters, reported the results of their own survey conducted in November 2018. They found that the consensus among the 35 leading property market analysts questioned was that the U.S. housing market as a whole will be facing headwinds: “House price growth is still expected to outpace inflation … over the next two years, but at a sharply lower rate than found in their August survey.” The Standard and Poor’s Index of U.S. Home Prices reached the same conclusion, forecasting a rise of only 3.7% in 2019.
But in Florida, the residential market is projected to outperform the national estimates by a wide margin, according to Realtor.com’s 2019 forecast for home price growth in the hundred largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas. While south Florida is predicted to again lead the way, all nine of the states’ districts listed in the report (Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Northport-Sarasota, Lakeland, Deltona-Daytona Beach, Palm Bay-Melbourne, and Cape Coral-Fort Myers-Naples) are expected to considerably exceed the national average for home price growth.
Both the weather and real estate forecasts look sunny for our state in 2019.