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Amanda Sun bought three houses worth a total of $3 million on the Gold Coast after visiting just once as a tourist.
Sun is Chinese, 33 years old and owns a small trading firm, according to a recent news story. She is typical of the Chinese buyers who have rescued many Australian developers, agents and vendors from deeper price cuts and longer selling times in recent years.
Less than 12 months ago, the Chinese government got a shock when the results of a comprehensive survey of high-net-worth Chinese like Sun were released. The two organizations behind the survey are very respectable, Bain &amp; Co and China Merchants’ Bank, so the results can’t be written off as a fluke.
The survey revealed what many Australian agents had already been feeling: rich Chinese, for various reasons, want to get out of China, and they believe buying property in Australia and other countries enables their escape.
Not just a few rich Chinese want out.
A full 57% of rich Chinese have contemplated emigration. About 20% have actually completed immigration procedures in countries like Australia or expect to do so soon.
These percentages account for huge numbers of individuals, because China has the fourth-largest number of high-net-worth individuals in the world. Each year the cohort grows by nearly 10%.
Many of those rich Chinese emigrants are coming to Australia. China sent more immigrants to Australia in 2010 than any other country, including the UK and New Zealand.
Even as they sink roots in Australia, rich Chinese like Sun are also keeping a presence in China. For example, published research shows that about 80% plan to keep their Chinese passports.
It is common for the wife and child to live abroad, while the husband spends most of his time in China. Chinese émigrés might still run businesses in China.
They are usually moving abroad for their children. They believe that Western schools and universities are better than their Chinese counterparts, and that living overseas gives their children an advantage.
Foreign residency could also be useful in case China goes through policy shifts, like massive new wealth taxes, or social unrest. China is a rapidly changing country. Riots, strikes and protests recently doubled over the last five years to 180,000.
Emigration and educating children are just two of the reasons wealthy Chinese are buying property in Australia. The third is for investment.
As Sun puts it, Australia’s “legal system is better”. She plans to migrate to Australia to live in one of her new homes. She will find renters for the other two.
Australian property is an attractive investment in its own right, with <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/residential/house-prices-will-be-55-higher-in-a-decade-christopher-joye/2011082551288">credible economists predicting</a> prices will be 55% higher in 10 years.
It also represents a diversification of risk. Instead of only investing in property in China, they put some of their money overseas so that they don’t lose everything if the Chinese property market goes down.
Buyers like Sun have made a real impact on the Australian property market. As one agent told the Sydney Morning Herald about Chinese buyers, “They're the only ones that have got the big dollars at the moment”.
The Financial Times has reported that Chinese buyers account for 20% of all purchases in Sydney. This may be an overestimate, but it reflects the trend. They tend to seek out property that has water views or is close to the ocean or major universities and CBDs.
Many developers depend on Chinese buyers for their off-the-plan unit sales. Chinese parents often buy Australian apartments for their children to live in while studying.
At the Stamford Residences, a 30-level tower at The Rocks in Sydney, one buyer recently bought a $2 million apartment to serve as this sort of student housing. In total, mainland Chinese buyers snapped up about six of the building’s 122 apartments.
In Melbourne, developer Morry Schwartz of PanUrban says, "Chinese buyers, both local and from Asia, account for about 60% of enquiries and purchases at Pan Urban's developments. That's up substantially from a few years ago.”
Meriton general manager Peter Spira told the Australian Financial Review that Chinese buyers enabled the company to keep up production rates in Melbourne and Sydney through the global financial crisis.
"We build between 1,300 to 1,500 new apartments each year in NSW and south-east Queensland," Spira says.
Schwartz reckons, "You are not doing a good job at selling real estate in Australia today if you're not marketing to the Chinese buyer”.
Chinese buyers also make their mark on the higher end of the market. Just this month, a luxury penthouse at Lumiere Residences in the Sydney CBD was reported sold for $8.1 million to an Asian, possibly Chinese, investor.
But, while new developments and luxury properties grab the headlines, the overwhelming interest I see is from Chinese buyers enquiring about affordable second-hand property in good locations.
Andrew Taylor is  the founder and CEO of sales and marketing of<a href="https://www.juwai.com/" target="_blank"> Juwai.com</a>, the number-one Chinese real estate portal for property in Australia and around the world. 
 
 
 
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ataylor-LB7AWVFTs9

How to understand Chinese property buyers

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Today, Chinese money makes up the fastest-growing segment of the real estate market in Australia.
Darrell Irwin of Colliers International says that the investment wave is pushed by Chinese immigration and tourism. Chinese see the Gold Coast and Australia as a safe place to invest and a good place to educate their children.
Australia is the southern hemisphere’s Switzerland.
Irwin thinks this Chinese investment boom could end up being bigger than the Japanese wave of the 1980s.
There is a difference, however. As Irwin says: "The Chinese are a lot more astute than the Japanese were when it comes to the acquisition of real estate assets.”
Everyone from property developers to the Gold Coast City Council are trying to work out how to make sure some of that money finds its way into their pockets.
The council wants to create a <a href="https://www.chinatowngoldcoast.com.au/" target="_blank">Chinatown in Southport </a>to serve the 200,000 tourists who fly down from China to the Gold Coast each year.
The Queensland government has put money into the project, contributing $50,000 to create a Chinatown masterplan. Several China-based investors have already invested significant amounts, according to a report published in the Sun.
Even Tom Tate, mayor of the Gold Coast, is getting in on the act. He bought his own tickets to China, Taiwan and Macau, where he met with rich Chinese investors and encouraged them to come to Australia.
It is no surprise that deep-pocketed organizations are targeting Chinese buyers. They have the resources to do so.
But what can individual vendors and agents do?
It turns out that, even with a limited budget, you can do plenty. To find out if you have the kind of property that could appeal to a buyer from China, or a Chinese -speaking buyer from Australia, <a target="_blank" href="/property-observer">read my last article</a>.
 
<hr class="system-pagebreak">
 
Next, the most important thing you can do is list your property in Chinese, either on your own website, on a portal like Juwai.com or both.
With Chinese buyers, presentation matters. One reason that Chinese buy more luxury goods than every other country but Japan is that they live in a very competitive society. The brand of your watch can set you apart from the next person and demonstrate your success.
This has an impact on your property listings. I cannot put it any more simply than this: your listings must be professionally translated by humans -- not by Google Translate or any other software.
Chinese buyers want to feel like they are getting the best, so machine translations do you and your brand damage. They seem unprofessional, and the language they generate often comes across as childish, confusing and even offensive.
My second piece of advice for the property marketer hoping to sell to Chinese buyers is to host your listing on the inside of the Great Firewall of China.
There are two internets today: the global internet and the Chinese internet. China’s central government makes no secret of the fact that it is constantly sifting through web traffic to look for things it considers against the best interests of Chinese society.
When a Chinese user tries to load a web page from Australia, that page will probably be examined by the government’s automatic censors. This takes time.
Some websites are 45 times slower for within the firewall than for users outside of it. Chinese users either get frustrated and give up, or their web browser gives them a “Page can’t load” error. Neither outcome helps you sell property, nor present your brand professionally.
Third, focus on the right audience.
Lets face it, you are not going to sell a $700,000 property to someone earning the equivalent of $625 per month. Make sure your listing reaches high-net-worth Chinese and not the average Chinese.
Many wealthy Chinese expect to apply for Australian residency via the new Significant Investor Visa. Others send their children here for an expensive English-language education (about 150,000 are studying in Australia right now). These people are your audience.
The last tip I have space for in this article is to be patient. Just like you, Chinese buyers prefer to take their time researching the overall market, individual listings and real estate agencies.
The good news is, once they have all three elements in place, they can move surprisingly fast, and often make multiple purchases over a short period of time.
Andrew Taylor is the founder and CEO of sales and marketing of <a href="https://www.juwai.com/" target="_blank">Juwai.com</a>, the number-one Chinese real estate portal for property in Australia and around the world. Find out more about him at <a href="https://list.juwai.com">list.juwai.com</a>.
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Four tips to help you sell Australian property to Chinese buyers

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More Chinese left for an international holiday during China's Golden Week holiday in October than ever before in history, according to official data. Many of them came to Australia, hunting for property.
Our Hong Kong call center worked around the clock taking queries from Chinese real estate buyers in locations around the world, including the Gold Coast.
Buyers viewed 66% more property on our international property portal Juwai.com as Golden Week approached. Then, once Golden Week started, traveling Chinese buyers switched to their phones and iPads – giving mobile traffic a 99% boost.
Chinese buyers have spent millions on luxury residences in new towers like the Broadbeach Oracle and the Soul and Hilton buildings in Surfers Paradise, according to recent reports.
As I write this, there is a three-bedroom, four-bath residence on the 22nd floor of The Oracle for sale at $1.8 million. Perhaps it will sell to a Chinese buyer, too.
If so, it might well go during the next peak travel periods of Christmas and Chinese New Year (in February 2013). It is no surprise that Chinese New Year is the busiest travel time of the year, but Christmas?
Yes, Christmas. Santa isn’t just for Westerners any more. Christmas has become a key travel period for high-net-worth Chinese in part because it is the ultimate symbol of the allure of Western culture.
It is during holidays like Christmas and Chinese New Year that many high-net-worth individuals combine overseas holidays with overseas property scouting. And we all hold the purse strings a little less tightly when on vacation.
There has been a significant rise in the number of enquiries about Australia that we receive from potential buyers, with many of our wealthy Chinese customers telling us they plan to take up Australia's new Significant Investor Visa.
Even the Chinese think of Australia as "the lucky country". This new visa exempts the language requirement and is more flexible with residence guidelines, which is lucky indeed.
With so many Chinese investing in Australian property, the question that vendors and agents ask me most often is, "Would my property appeal to Chinese buyers?"
There are already around 230,000 Australian listings on <a href="https://juwai.com/" target="_blank">Juwai.com</a>. To find out if your property should join them, you need to look at it from the eyes of an investor from China.
 
 
<hr class="system-pagebreak">
 
If your property is in a major metropolitan area like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth, it could interest a Chinese buyer. But you don't have to be in a city centre. There is high demand for working farms, as well.
Residential properties with income and projected capital growth near mines and mining areas make a good investment case and therefor attract Chinese buyers. Other types of properties that attract Chinese investors are new developments, which even non-residents can purchase.
Even what the Foreign Investment Review Board calls "second-hand dwellings" are very appealing to Chinese buyers. Second-hand housing is popular with buyers who know Australia already, including those who already have one or more properties here. Second-hand housing is also very popular with the Chinese Australians who search for local property on <a href="https://juwai.com/" target="_blank">Juwai.com</a> because it is in Chinese rather than English.
It may be beyond the scope of this article, but there is more demand than ever for large investment opportunities, like those above $50 million. In fact, a journalist contacted me about one such deal as I sat at my desk writing this article.
If your property fits into one of these categories, what should you be doing to reach the Chinese buyer? Here, I'll share my top tip with you. (<a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/residential/how-to-understand-chinese-property-buyers/2012020253055" target="_blank">For more tips, read this article</a>)
If you are a vendor, make sure your agent acts on this advice: write your advertising copy and property descriptions with the flavor of destination and lifestyle marketing more than of traditional local property marketing.
Remember, the typical Chinese buyer is part foreign tourist and part savvy investor. Copy like, "Malvern delight – off main road, fully renovated, period charm," does not help sell your listing to the Chinese buyer.
Instead, the copy should focus on Australia as a safe investment, on the lifestyle the property offers, the number of total rooms, transportation links, the quality of schools, suburb highlights, the security of investment and local property value trends.
As <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/industry-news/the-five-words-that-help-sell-your-home-and-the-five-that-don-t-mike-mortlock/2012111557844" target="_blank">Mike Mortlock has pointed out </a> the right words can help sell your property faster and for a higher price.
When marketing to the Chinese buyer, be sure to choose your words carefully.
Andrew Taylor is the founder and CEO of sales and marketing of <a href="https://www.juwai.com/" target="_blank">Juwai.com</a>, the number-one Chinese real estate portal for property in Australia and around the world. Find out more about him at <a href="https://list.juwai.com" target="_blank">list.juwai.com.</a>
 
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How to sell Australian property to the savvy Chinese investor: Juwai's Andrew Taylor

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There are so many good agents out there. There are also some bad ones. So, how do you choose the agent that is right for you?
Choosing the right agent is especially important for investors whose real estate portfolios are a major portion of their wealth. You may have held onto an investment property for years, and done everything right in that time. 
Even so, your choice of real estate agent to help you exit the investment could still make a huge difference to your degree of financial success.
Vital for investors
That's a big statement, so let’s look at an example to understand it better. Let’s say you paid $500,000 for a unit in <a href="https://www.urban.com.au/property-observer" target="_blank">Artarmon</a>, on Sydney’s north shore, some time ago. Perhaps you reasonably expect to sell it now for about $600,000. 
A good agent might be able to ensure you reach that target price. With a bad one, you might fall short by as much as $25,000. 
Could a bad agent really cut your potential profit by 20%? Of course they could. By failing to develop leads from potential buyers, a bad agent can reduce both the size and the number of offers you receive.
If your property hasn’t gained as much value as the example, the impact of a bad agent could conceivably consume your entire profit. In the worst case, it could put you into the red.
I have always been a big believer in real estate agents, and this calculation just reinforces that belief for me. A good agent can make the world of difference.
That’s why answering the question, “Which agent do I hire?” could be the most important single choice you make in the entire lifetime of your investment property. The only question that is more important is, “Which property do I buy?"
Is the rapping agent right for you?
So which agent do you choose? Maybe you want the hip hop agent, who filmed a rap video in one of his listings. The lyrics include these rhyming lines:
"To be the host with the most you don’t have to be rich,
"Come check my opens and meet with me, b____.”
Or, if rap isn’t your thing, maybe you would prefer an agent who takes excellent property photos.   The blog terriblerealestateagentphotos.com found this listing photo, which it says gives off a "vague sense of animosity". 
Look closely and see if you can guess why. 
<a href="https://24.media.tumblr.com/3c1e5033b3e850ec095302f57a6e677b/tumblr_mvdg8n96HV1rrqskho1_500.jpg"></a>
<img src="/images/stories/2014/02/11/agent_feb_11_one.jpg" width="470" height="352" alt="agent_feb_11_one">Seriously, it is vitally important to hire the right agent for your sale. I have worked with real estate agents professionally for most of my career and, year after year, there’s one piece of advice that I keep coming back to.
It’s simple and not even very clever. It’s certainly not difficult.
None the less, it is perhaps the last bit of advice regarding hiring real estate agents that you’ll ever need.
My advice is this:
Never choose an agent who talks over you. 
In any profession, if your efforts to say something only causes the other person to talk louder or faster, you should have serious concerns. Their behavior shows a lack of respect, sensitivity and professionalism.
When someone talks over you, you can assume one or both the of the following: 
• This person doesn't care what I have to say.
• Or, this person lacks the self-awareness and control to know when to be quiet and listen, and when to speak.
Either way, you don't want an agent like that representing you in a transaction that could mean the loss or gain of tens of thousands of dollars.
Hurting you and themselves
Perhaps you are willing to give talkative agents the benefit of the doubt. After all, you might tell yourself, "They do know more about real estate than I do. Maybe what they have to say about my home is more important than what I intended to say."
Certainly, a good agent will have important things to say. But in listings presentations, the best agents do more listening than talking. It is vitally important to them that they understand their client's state of mind, and that they learn all the important details about the property that only the vendor can know.
In this sense, a real estate agent who refuses to let you speak is doing a disservice not only to you, but also to themselves.
So, whether you prefer a rap artist or a photographic genius as your real estate agent, never choose one who talks over you.
Andrew Taylor is the Queensland-born co-CEO of <a style="font-size: 14px;" rel="nofollow" href="https://juwai.com/">Juwai.com</a>, the number-one Chinese real estate portal for property in Australia and around the world. 
He has almost a decade and a half of experience in Australian and Chinese real estate and managing print, TV, radio and online media. He also has bachelor and graduate degrees in classical music, and plays the diyin gehu (Chinese bass).
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Choosing the right agent: The one thing they should never, ever do

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GUEST OBSERVATION
Like cheese and wine, but not – unfortunately for me – brains or biceps, the Significant Investor Visa improves with age.  Now that it has celebrated its first birthday, Australia’s visa program for immigrants willing to invest $5 million in the lucky country can be judged a roaring success.  Back in June, 2013, some observers called the <a href="/expert-insights/investing/23148-monday-june-3-feature-more-hype-than-reality-significant-investor-visa-queue-jumpers-yet-to-be-significant?limitstart=0" target="_blank">Significant Investor Visa “more hype than reality”</a>. Well, bloggers for Property Observer seldom make mistakes, but that was a big one.
<blockquote>
It is not by accident that 90% of the applicants for the Visa come from mainland China.
</blockquote>
It turns out that the visa wasn’t over-hyped, it was just getting started. Even Usain Bolt had to learn to walk before he could run. Here are the latest figures for the program, as provided to me by the office of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison: • Rich would-be immigrants have lodged more than 600 applications for the Significant Investor Visa. • 91% of these wealthy applicants are Chinese. • 88 visas have already been granted. • The investments the current batch of applicants have proposed add up to nearly half a billion dollars in new  activity in Australia.   Some lampooned the government of the time for giving the Significant Investor Visa the official name of "Subclass 888.”  Looking back, using these numbers seems inspired. Triple eight is the luckiest combination of digits in Chinese numerology – and a potent symbol of prosperity in Chinese culture. It is not by accident that 90% of the applicants for the Visa come from mainland China. The fall of the Australian dollar has also favoured the Subclass 888 visa. Over the past year, the amount of Aussie money it takes to buy 1 Chinese Yuan has steadily increased.  The reverse is also true, and Australian dollars have gotten cheaper for anyone holding Chinese money. From the perspective of Chinese investors, that means an investment of AU$5 million has gotten steadily smaller in their own currency, so that it starts to look like a bargain. Real estate agents are seeing the impact.  Georg Chmiel, CEO of the LJ Hooker network, told me this: "Our LJ Hooker offices are increasingly fielding calls from Asian nationals looking to buy a trophy home for when they are in Australia.”  He also said that, on an international stage, “Our real estate represents value for money. We have a transparent government and stable economy.” Another real estate leader I spoke to recently agrees. Michael Davoren, Managing Director of RE/MAX Australia, told me that his network is also getting many inquiries from Chinese buyers. “There is significant representation in these inquiries for premium properties that could serve as residences for beneficiaries of the Subclass 888 investor visa,” he recently emailed me. So, the next time a vendor asks you if the Significant Investor Visa is having an impact, tell them that – notwithstanding what they may have read – the answer is “Yes.”
Andrew Taylor is the Queensland-born co-CEO of <a href="https://juwai.com/" rel="nofollow">Juwai.com</a>, the number-one Chinese real estate portal for property in Australia and around the world.
He has almost a decade and a half of experience in Australian and Chinese real estate and managing print, TV, radio and online media. He also has bachelor and graduate degrees in classical music, and plays the diyin gehu (Chinese bass).
 
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Why the Significant Investor Visa is the fine wine of visa programs

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GUEST OBSERVATION
It’s rare when something from Parliament obtains the obsessive attention of the real estate industry.
The Parliamentary inquiry into foreign investment in residential real estate is an exception. Since so many interesting facts have come to light through the inquiry, this post is a helpful cheat sheet to the most important ones.
Foreign Investment: It’s Actually Plummeting
One of the most interesting submissions to the inquiry comes from Urban Taskforce Australia. They pointed out that foreign investment in Australia is not increasing, but decreasing. (Read <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=d3eae632-8ae7-43b3-aff3-4680dc17993a&amp;subId=252519" target="_blank">their submission here</a>.)
That’s happening despite the greater number of buyers from China, who have been the salvation of any number of stranded vendors.
Overall foreign investment in Australian plummeted by 18%, according to official statistics, between 2011 and 2013. Some governments would consider such a large and fast drop to be a crisis in the making.
This is where the Chinese come in. In the context of rapidly falling foreign investment, the Chinese are the rare bright spot. I know this isn’t how things are usually presented, but it’s what the facts show.
The US, Singapore, the UK — these once-reliable friends have dramatically cut their investments in Australian property. With other friends deserting our real estate market, the Chinese are almost alone in sticking with us. 
Rather than abandoning our property market, Chinese have actually increased their investment. They haven’t yet reached the heights of $8.2 billion that the Yanks reached in 2012. However, with a 40% increase to $5.9 billion last year, the Chinese can hardly be accused of failing to pull their weight.  
Foreign Buyers Mean More New Buildings
The submission from Meriton, Australia’s largest apartment builder, showed that foreign buyers actually create new housing in Australia. (Read <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=a30eb4e3-146a-4a68-905e-06f75b083e13&amp;subId=252539" target="_blank">the Meriton submission here</a>.)
Meriton wrote that foreign investment "provides a significant contribution to the stock of new Australian housing," increasing supply for sale and rent.
Meriton founder Harry Triguboff says that foreign investors buy 13% of his new apartments – often off the plan. That provides "vital initial impetus” that makes possible the construction of Meriton’s new complexes. 
He also points to government data that shows that foreign buyers pay an average of $1.06 million for established homes and $646,000 for new dwellings. That’s much more than the national median and puts them in another league altogether than first home buyers.
While Foreign Buyers Spend More, They Pay Less
One submission to the Parliamentary inquiry involved actual new research. Lorenzo Casavecchia and Adrian Lee of the University of Technology in Sydney looked at about 74,000 established home sales. (You can <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=3e731a61-1f26-42c5-93ae-238064206991&amp;subId=252425" target="_blank">download their paper here</a>.)
They found that the number of Chinese buyers went up over time. That matches with the data we’ve already looked at, showing more Chinese investment in recent years.
What’s shocking, given what passes for accepted wisdom about Chinese buyers, is that the pair also found that, “on average, Chinese buyers pay 2.04% or $13,800 less than other buyers.”
I won’t get into every little detail of this fascinating research paper, so suffice to say that they controlled for just about every conceivable factor that could affect the price.
The low-down is this: while foreign buyers buy more expensive homes, they seem to get them at a bargain. That makes it unlikely that they are pricing other buyers out of the market. 
It’s hard to price someone out of the market when you’re paying less than the market price.
Perhaps the most poignant submission to the Parliamentary inquiry was from a Mr Kristijan Gjikoski. He wrote, simply and directly. Here are his own words, slightly edited for length (read <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=036c65fb-30ee-4a79-925d-1456f8b0a035&amp;subId=252269" target="_blank">his whole submission here</a>):
"Please don’t change any laws in relation to foreign real estate investment, [which is] creating jobs in manufacturing, trades and services. Long term overseas investment can been seen as a automatic stabiliser as when things go bad." 
Andrew Taylor is the co-CEO of <a href="https://juwai.com/" rel="nofollow">Juwai.com</a>.
Image courtesy of JJ Harrison/Wikimedia/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>.
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The Parliamentary inquiry into foreign investment: A quick submissions cheat sheet

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GUEST OBSERVATION
Lost in the overblown debate about whether Chinese real estate buyers are good or bad for Australia is something more interesting. It's the true story of where Chinese buyers got all their money.
If you are over the age of 30, you grew up thinking of China as destitute. Encouraging me to eat my veggies at dinner time, my mother used to say to me, "Children in China are starving". 
So how is it that China today has so much money that it can afford to invest in Australian real estate?
To answer that, we have to travel back to 1978. China's leader Deng Xiaoping kicked off economic reforms on a bigger scale than anything ever seen in any other country - at least until the Soviet Block collapsed.
Deng had very different priorities than the hard core communists who had gone before. He was a pragmatist who saw economic growth as a way to improve the lives of the Chinese people. 
One of Deng's most famous lines is: "To be rich is glorious". That hardly sounds like Karl Marx. 
The incredible wealth China has today began with the reforms that Deng kicked off. He made economic growth a national crusade and urged his countrymen to become 'socialist entrepreneurs'. 
Many of the wealthy Chinese who invest in premium Australian homes got their start as entrepreneurs in this period. Remember, no matter how much money they have today, just about everyone in China over the age of 35 started off poor.
Here's a typical story. Liu Yongxing is a billionaire today, but was so poor as a young man that his parents had to send one of his brothers to live with another family. They couldn't afford to feed their own son. 
As the economy opened up, Liu scraped enough money together to begin keeping quail and selling the eggs. Then he moved into animal feed. 
Today, Liu is a billionaire who owns 63 companies in the fields of aluminium, power production, agriculture, food, chemicals, natural resources, commercial banking, insurance, and real estate.
Zhang Xin is another beneficiary of Deng's reforms. Now a billioinaire, she turned 18 in 1978, the year the Chinese leader began opening the economy. 
As a teenager, she lived with her mother in a room the size of a closet. To save for an education abroad, Zhang worked for five years in small garment and electronics factories in Hong Kong. 
Once she had saved enough, she moved to London to study English at secretarial school. An amazing career followed, and today she has more money than all but a handful of people in the world.
Successes like Zhang's and Liu's have consistently made China one of the fastest growing economies in the wold. This growth lifted hundreds of millions from extreme poverty. It also inducted tens of millions of them into the ranks of billionaires, millionaires, and the merely well off.
When you understand how much they have accomplished in such a short time, it's hard not to be impressed by the successful Chinese of today. One of the benefits of having these dynamic entrepreneurs invest and do business in Australia is that they often do more than just buy real estate. They also invest their skills and capital into the Australian economy.
Hopefully, this little history lesson has given you a better understanding of how a country that was so recently poor has so quickly gotten rich. 
With future growth rates predicted to hover around 7% or 8% per year, China's massive economy will only become bigger. And, the benefits of their investment in Australian real estate will also continue to grow. 
ANDREW TAYLOR is the Queensland-born co-CEO of <a href="https://juwai.com/" rel="nofollow">Juwai.com</a>, the number-one Chinese real estate portal for property in Australia and around the world.
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Why do Chinese buyers have so much money? 

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GUEST OBSERVATION
There are four relatively uncontroversial things I believe to be true about Chinese buyers.
But you'll be surprised by the fifth.
<ol>
<li>I have no doubt that Chinese buyers are a much bigger presence in the market today than just a few years ago.</li>
<li>I know for a fact that Chinese buyers have spurred much new construction in Australia - thus adding to the stock of homes on the market and creating jobs and tax revenue.</li>
<li>I trust the data from various sources that reveals Chinese buyers to this year be the largest foreign buyer group in Australia.</li>
<li>
I know that Australia can expect Chinese investment to increase in the coming five to 10 years. As China relaxes its capital controls, the flow of money to Australia and other countries, according to the Bank of England, could triple. Now for the surprising fact. Anyone who pays attention to the real experts, such as Glenn Stevens of the Reserve Bank of Australia, already knows this last truth. Drum roll, please. 
</li>
<li>The fifth thing I know: Chinese buyers are not distorting the Australian real estate market.</li>
</ol>
With all the media hyperventilation suggesting the contrary, how could I possibly know this?
It's because Chinese are foreign investors, and total foreign investment is down significantly. The total of Chinese investment into Australian real estate is nowhere near large enough to make up for last year's decrease by other nationalities.
That's right. The total amount that all non-Chinese foreign investors transferred into the bank accounts of Australian property vendors last year actually decreased.
It didn't decrease by a little. It decreased by $8.2 billion.
Those British, American and other foreign investors haven't disappeared altogether. Even so, there aren't nearly as many of them as there were just 12 months before.
Yes, Australia, as a fellow countryman, I know it can be hard to accept, but last year foreign buyers did a runner.
From $54 billion in 2012, non-Chinese foreign investment plummeted down to $46 billion.
The Chinese valiantly tried to make up the difference, but they fell several billion short. As someone once said, "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money."
Perhaps that's why the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia has gone on the record with his belief that the Chinese aren't having any real impact on prices.
That doesn't mean Chinese buyers aren't important. Quite the contrary: they are more important than ever. But the Chinese, as a subgroup of all foreign buyers, are far from distorting the market.
For foreign buyers to push prices up in Australia, presumably their total demand would have to go up. And –even when you include Chinese buyers– total demand from foreign investors plummeted last year.
Whatever price rises we're seeing, then, have to be due to other factors. The prime contenders seem to be wage growth, investor demand and low interest rates, but that's the subject of another story.
Andrew Taylor is the founder and CEO of sales and marketing of <a href="https://www.juwai.com/" target="_blank">Juwai.com</a>, the number-one Chinese real estate portal for property in Australia and around the world. Find out more about him at <a href="https://list.juwai.com/" target="_blank">list.juwai.com.</a>
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The surprising truth about Chinese buyers: Five must-know facts

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GUEST OBSERVATION
National real estate markets around the world, like Australia's, are being internationalized.
That's one of the things <a href="https://www.choosebrisbane.com.au/G20-Brisbane/Global-Cafe/Brisbane-Global-Cafe-Speakers" target="_blank">I'll be talking about from the stage</a> of the G20 curtain-raising event, the Global Cafe, this 12 November.
The G20 meeting is a coffee klatch for the leaders of the world’s biggest economies — and this year it’s in Brisbane. This particular meeting is an important one for real estate. The G20 hopes to find a way to raise economic output by 2% and add $2 trillion to the world economy. 
That kind of growth could lead directly to more than a billion dollars of new real estate transactions in Australia alone, with both international and domestic buyers included. Each billion in sales generates some $25 million in agent commissions.
This positive impact is one way of measuring how the real estate market is going global. In total, the world’s property investment market will reach US$1.33 trillion by the end of 2014.
Highrise Harry, also known as Harry Triguboff, managing director of developer Meriton, believes that international buyers are "an important factor in maintaining business confidence and giving developers the impetus and security to embark on new projects". That is what he told the Parliamentary Inquiry into foreign investment in residential real estate.
He also wrote that foreign investment is responsible for "directly increasing the supply of new housing".
Personally, I’m most familiar with the increase in Chinese investment. I don’t think Gough Whitlam or former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai would have in their wildest dreams imagined the flood of money and people now rushing back and forth between China and Australia, when they shook hands in Beijing back in 1971. 
China has since transformed itself from an undeveloped country into the world’s soon to be largest economy. It is the nation that adds the most to global growth, the second largest buyer of diamonds, top drinker of red wine, largest growth market for iPhones and Australian milk and nearly the largest consumer of oil.
China is growing so rapidly that, just over the past three years, it used 39% more cement than the USA used during the whole 20th century.
With their <a href="%20http:/data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNS.ICTR.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&amp;sort=desc" target="_blank">incredibly high savings rate</a> (greater than 50%), Chinese have money to invest in Australia. High net worth Chinese allocate 16% of their assets to overseas real estate. 
Last year, Chinese investors were approved for $5.9 billion of investments in Australian real estate.
For vendors, internationalization is another way of saying “more potential buyers". It’s not just the Chinese. It’s also Kiwis, Indians, the British and more.
That’s why I believe the next home you sell could go global.
Andrew Taylor is the co-CEO and co-Founder of <a href="https://www.juwai.com/" target="_blank">Juwai.com</a>, recent winner of the "most influential international property site in China 2014" award from the country’s peak e-commerce body. 
Juwai has created a global platform for real estate information servicing the world’s Chinese communities. Started in 2011, Juwai is a services-based business on a strong IT platform that works with millions of Chinese property buyers around the world engaged in global property investment.
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The real estate market is going global

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Guest observation
I’m not happy about it, but Australia's housing market has a potentially tough year ahead of it.
There are no guarantees in forecasting, but when half-trillon-dollar investment managers start throwing around phrases like "looming housing correction," you know there could be a problem.
In its recent report on Australia's economy, Alliance Bernstein used just that phrase. The report concluded, "There's a clear risk that falling house prices may be the next phase in the post-commodity–adjustment story."
(<a href="https://www.apple.com/">Jessie Richardson</a> covered this report. Get your own <a href="https://www.apple.com/">PDF copy</a> here.)
I'm certainly not one of those who think investment bankers are always right. Perhaps only investment bankers themselves fall for that fallacy.
There is strong evidence, however, that residential prices in the capital cities will either stall or fall in the coming 12 months. Here are four of the key points:
<ol>
<li>Australia is facing an income recession and weak GDP growth. In trend terms, GDP increased only 0.5 percent in the September quarter 2014. Australia's <a href="https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/50fbcf2e-9d4b-11e4-9b22-00144feabdc0#ixzz3PUJBQwE4">income recession</a> is mostly due to lower prices for our biggest exports, resources. Gross domestic income fell 0.3% and 0.4% in the second and third quarters of 2014, respectively. As a result, real wages are falling for the first time since 1992. 
</li>
<li>Conditions in the labour market, as the Reserve Bank points out in its <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/smp/2014/nov/html/overview">November statement</a>, remain subdued. Weak employment and weak housing markets tend to reinforce each other. This was shown most clearly in the wake of the GFC in the US. <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/the-relationship-between-the-housing-and-labor-market-crises-and-doubling-up.htm">Many studies</a> found increased “doubling up” of families sharing homes, and more young adults remained in their parents' homes instead of starting their own households. As one newspaper put it, “Love isn’t all that’s keeping family together today. The bruising housing market is too.” 
</li>
<li>Bloomberg news <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-05/australia-needs-stimulus-to-avoid-recession-morgan-stanley-says">concluded recently</a> that Australia may well have a recession this year, unless the government "acts decisively to stimulate the economy." One of the government's roles is to help balance out the business cycle. The Abbott government promised to do this with big investments in infrastructure. Unfortunately, even today that is still more an aspiration than a reality. 
</li>
<li>Investors are likely to play a smaller part in the housing market this year, as the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has begun discouraging banks from engaging in higher-risk lending. Risky interest-only loans (popular with onshore investors) accounted for 42.5% –almost half– of new housing loan approvals in the September quarter. That's such an outsized role that any significant drop in investor transactions will take real heat out of the housing market.</li>
</ol>
 All things considered, housing could indeed have a tough year in 2015. It will certainly be poor by comparison to last year's performance.
ANDREW TAYLOR is the co-CEO of Juwai.com, China’s No. 1 international property portal and recent winner of the "most influential international property site in China 2014" award from the country’s peak e-commerce body. 
Forbes calls Juwai.com “China's biggest real estate source for those looking to buy overseas.”
 
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Andrew Taylor

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