The Lumina, a 656-unit luxury condominium project going up in San Francisco’s South of Market area, has a Chinese equity partner, Vanke, and is marketing units in China. It already has contracts for 156 units that will open for occupancy in July. Of those, 10 percent went to buyers living outside the country, said Carl Shannon, a regional director with the project’s developer, Tishman Speyer.
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Based on responses from 3,547 agents, the report said that for the 12 months that ended in March, foreign clients purchased $92.2 billion worth of existing U.S. homes, up 35 percent from the previous 12 months. Foreign purchases represented 7 percent of total dollars spent on existing homes in the latest period. About half of these foreign buyers live outside the United States; the other half are recent immigrants or here on temporary visas.
If people from other countries want to buy in SFBA, then infill housing could become a significant export. Non-resident buyers tend to prefer professionally managed apartment buildings over SFH, so it should be possible to replace some of SF's housing stock with taller buildings while allowing the existing residents to remain on the lower floors and selling the new higher floors to new buyers. Unfortunately, most of SF remains zoned for short SFH.
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The article below includes two estimates and some data:
“Maybe 20 percent of the deals in San Francisco and the Peninsula are cash overseas buyers....â€
The Lumina, a 656-unit luxury condominium project going up in San Francisco’s South of Market area, has a Chinese equity partner, Vanke, and is marketing units in China. It already has contracts for 156 units that will open for occupancy in July. Of those, 10 percent went to buyers living outside the country, said Carl Shannon, a regional director with the project’s developer, Tishman Speyer.
***
Based on responses from 3,547 agents, the report said that for the 12 months that ended in March, foreign clients purchased $92.2 billion worth of existing U.S. homes, up 35 percent from the previous 12 months. Foreign purchases represented 7 percent of total dollars spent on existing homes in the latest period. About half of these foreign buyers live outside the United States; the other half are recent immigrants or here on temporary visas.
If people from other countries want to buy in SFBA, then infill housing could become a significant export. Non-resident buyers tend to prefer professionally managed apartment buildings over SFH, so it should be possible to replace some of SF's housing stock with taller buildings while allowing the existing residents to remain on the lower floors and selling the new higher floors to new buyers. Unfortunately, most of SF remains zoned for short SFH.
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