New York is a city where fortunes are made and lost - and not only on Wall Street. After Lehman Brothers crashed, the number of 'short sales' - in which a home sells for less than the amount owned on a mortgage - rose alarmingly.
They included town houses, co-ops - owned by co-operative housing corporations - and condominiums. It seems no one was spared. Short sales advertised in one week ranged from a US$250,000 two-bedroom on the Upper East Side, to a US$2 million three-bedroom property designed by Philippe Starck in the financial district.
Despite prices plummeting by 30 per cent, American buyers were thin on the ground, such was the panic about their own circumstances. But from the outside, it was an offshore investor's dream.
Three factors crippling the United States property market - an oversupply of homes for sale, high unemployment and a weak currency - worked to their advantage, making a very attractive proposition for overseas buyers.
Investors who would normally put funds into the New York Stock Exchange now saw the value in property. Apart from the pure investment numbers adding up, there's also the desirability factor: who wouldn't like to slip into a conversation that they owned a condo in Manhattan?
That interest translated to sales. Data from the National Association of Realtors indicates that, between April 2009 and March last year, foreign buyers purchased US$66 billion of US residential property, or 7 per cent of the residential market. Buyers from Hong Kong and the mainland were the fourth biggest buyer group.