They save all the best units for us to sell.
You can’t even find these units on the website.
I’ve been given access to an event that is selling units inside a luxury Manhattan condominium,
a building that hasn’t even been completed yet.
The building is 125 Greenwich street, it’s an 88-story residence going up in New York’s financial district.
But, this event isn’t in New York.
It’s in Hong Kong.
…That’s why we think the dollar will basically be very strong going forward.
The Chinese are the number one foreign buyers of U.S. homes.
And it’s not uncommon for firms to promote U.S. residential properties to investors
in Mainland China and here in Hong Kong.
…If you want to preserve your wealth, this is the place to be and Manhattan is the place, the key place.
This event is hosted by Asia Bankers Club and its several business units.
The whole aim is to educate buyers about the New York real estate market, and of course, sell condos.
And in some cases, deals happen right on the spot.
Damian Sung of Asia Bankers Club is here to educate potential buyers.
What happens after the seminar?
So after the seminar, people will come out. They’ll find their relationship managers.
Then they’ll sit down and they’ll go over picking their units, going over the taxes,
any other extra questions they might have.
Kingston Lai is the founder and CEO of the company.
Well, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market with the trade war and a lot of things going on, so naturally,
investors here are looking for safe haven assets where they can actually park their money.
...The U.S., New York is still one of the very few markets to actually still offer financing to Chinese investors.
It’s not about generating huge growth in their wealth, but it’s more about preserving their wealth.
That’s why they look into New York and the U.S. dollar specifically.
Thirty of the 273 units in this building were set aside for these private firms to sell.
In fact, at the time of the event, those units weren’t even available to U.S. buyers.
Scott Allison of real estate company Douglas Elliman says foreign buyers
have been an institution in New York for as long as he can remember.
You always have one group. If it’s not the Japanese, it’s the Brazilians or it’s the French.
Most recently it’s been a lot of Venezuelans because of the unrest there, so you always have
foreigners buying in New York. It’s a very important part of our market, primarily the condo market.
It’s one of the reasons that whenever there’s been ups and downs in other parts of the U.S. real estate market,
New York is usually able to weather it.
Yet more than half of the people here have never even been to New York before.
…Now how many of you guys here are at least familiar with New York?
Have you lived there? Anybody?
So how will this work?
Photos are the best education for Hong Kong people because if people haven’t been to New York,
they don’t know what’s where.
So giving them photos, they can actually see, “Okay, this is the Stock Exchange,
this is the One World Trade Center, Oculus, Battery Park, Brookfield Place."
Guests are either invited by one of these firms or they find out through an advertisement,
something like this that could come across their Facebook feed.
…On the United States map you have a total of 50 states, okay?
And New York state is over here.
The sessions here are done in both English and Chinese.
I’ve lived in both New York and Hong Kong and it’s interesting to see how they compare
neighborhoods to help people here better understand the New York market.
…So this is Wall Street. This is what Wall Street looks like.
You have the New York Stock Exchange and of course, you come here to do your IPO, Jack Ma is here…
The event took place shortly after there were reports that Amazon
was preparing to announce a new headquarters in New York City.
At the time, the news was projected to give a boost to New York’s real estate market,
and it even became a selling point here at the event.
A few months later though, Amazon would pull out of its New York expansion plans.
It’s important to note, that Hong Kong, while a part of China,
operates under its own set of rules and regulations.
But Beijing has been cracking down on money leaving China.
And mainland Chinese residents are restricted to only investing $50,000 abroad annually.
Any more requires special permission from the government.
Yet China’s economy is cooling.
What it’s impacting is really the very, very, very top because the Chinese were buying the most expensive
apartments, we’re talking the $30 million penthouses that were being built along West 57th Street, 432 Park.
That’s a bit of a challenge now because they’re pulling away from the New York market
because of the difficulty getting money out of China.
We need someone to replace the Chinese, either replace the Chinese
or make it easier for them to get their money out.
Yet money coming from China is still strong.
For six straight years, Chinese have been the top foreign buyers
in both units and dollar volume of residential housing.
And lately, more and more of the middle class are joining in on the trend.
Take the median price of a U.S. home sold to a Chinese buyer.
It’s gone from just under $530,000 in 2017, to $439,000 the next year.
Is it pretty common that after just one event investors are willing to commit?
We have events that we did for Vietnam that we just sell out 50 units in one weekend.
Asia Bankers Club says a few units were sold during this weekend event,
but many potential buyers wanted to visit New York first.
The people I speak with here say that education curve is the biggest challenge they face.
But it's these sorts of events that hope to fix that, to ultimately convince buyers to
a multiple million dollar purchase on the other side of the world.