Wealth Blog | International estate agents chase riches in China

More than 14,000 high net worth Chinese were there to check out super-cars, luxury yachts, private jets, expensive watches and jewellery, custom motorcycles and fine wine. They were also being enticed with international property at this expo.
 

The reality gap

You’ve got to hand it to these guys. Once the Chinese get rich, they spend it. It seems mainland high-net-worth individuals become internationally sophisticated very fast. They shop for an overseas second home as readily as they pick up a Ferrari. Or maybe they really do see it as an investment, not just a status symbol.

Western real estate agents have suddenly woken up to the potential of all this loot. They are actively working on luring Chinese investment money to their listings, says Dave Platter of China property website Juwai.com.

Some of the properties on offer were indeed mouth watering, but be honest, what is a mainland Chinese family going to do on a wet Sunday afternoon in a mini stately home in Warwickshire in the British midlands? Nip out for yum cha and invite a few friends over for mahjong? Hardly. If they don’t like the national pastime: hunting, shooting and fishing in Sainsbury’s supermarket on Saturday morning, followed by football, they are going to be pretty bored. Honiley Hall would cost them ￡10.5 million (HK$132 million) and it might be “so gorgeous it belongs in a Jane Austen book,” but most of those houses were bleak, dark and cold, miserable in English winters. Many of us live in Asia to thaw out and escape from these self-same draughty dwellings, so there’s a certain irony in flogging them to the Chinese.