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SCMP Reporter

A growing number of mainland investors with between US$25 million and $50 million to spend are investing in the commercial property markets in California and Hawaii.

 Financial Capital Investment Co (FCI) managing director Richard Alter said the mainlanders had replaced Hong Kong investors, whose numbers had diminished since the regional economic crisis.

  Mr Alter, who specialises in helping overseas-born Chinese living in Asia invest in the US commercial property market, said that since the Asian economic upheaval last year, many of his investment clients in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia had all but disappeared from the market.

 'The business from Hong Kong has fallen off by 50 per cent at least,' he said.

 Anyone involved in the Hong Kong stock market had left the property investment market completely.

 Instead, more of his clients wanting to sink money into the US were coming from the mainland.

 'We are dealing with wealthy individual investors from Shanghai and Beijing,' Mr Alter said.

 There also were mainland corporations with offices in Hong Kong which were interested in investing in California and Hawaii property.

 Mr Alter said about 75 per cent of the commercial property he sold to Chinese investors was owned by Japanese.

 'The Japanese are in trouble right now and a lot of the companies want to sell their properties,' he said.

 Economic reforms had created a few very wealthy people on the mainland.

 'I am not talking about thousands of people,' he said. 'I am talking about hundreds of people with this sort of money to spend.'  Mr Alter said mainland investments in US property had more than doubled in the last year or so, with FCI handling more than $100 million for mainland investors in that period.

 Mainlanders were keen to put their money in cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, where a Chinese infrastructure already existed, he said.

 These investors were reaping yields of 10 per cent and asset appreciation of 15-18 per cent.

 Many of these commercial properties were selling at 50-60 per cent below their former value, he said.



Mainland millionaires replace HK investors in US commercial market