Aoyuan eyes Australia and wants to be treated like a local down under

Keen to diversify domestic risks, cash-rich Chinese developers, including Guangdong-based China Aoyuan Property, are actively going overseas. Aoyuan has been targeting Australia recently and is determined to be eventually be treated like a local developer.

Aoyuan bought its first overseas project in Sydney and set up an Australian office last spring.

Jacky Chan, Aoyuan’s group vice-president and head of the Australian office, said Australia’s well-rounded education system and stable politics were the key factors that attracted Aoyuan to invest there. It is optimistic about increasing housing demand from wealthy migrants.

“Australia has about 300,000 new migrants every year; these group are rich as they invested at least A$5 million (HK$27 million) to gain Australian residency and certainly they have needs to buy houses,” Chan said, adding that the large number of Chinese students in Australia was also a target market.

The end of dramatic growth in mainland real estate market has pushed Chinese developers to look to overseas to find new sources of income. Aoyuan was not the first to enter the Australian market and is following in the footsteps of big names include Greenland, Wanda and Country Garden.

Chan said competition was inevitable but Aoyuan was seizing the advantage by learning to localise.

For its first project, One30 Hyde Park, the company chose to team up with Australian developer Ecove to jointly develop the 38-storey building with 148 luxury residential apartments and two retail shops in in Sydney’s central business district.