International real estate deals made up 8% of
A foreign buyer is someone who is defined as a person who purchases a property in this country but only lives here part of the year, with the unit used as a rental property, a vacation property or both.
The National Association of Realtors’ nationwide study found 61% of transactions involving foreign buyers are in five states: Florida, California, Arizona, Texas and New York. Florida is where 23% of the sales to buyers took place.
Over the $74 billion of total existing home sales in Florida during the study period, $6.4 billion involved a foreign buyer. Prices paid by those buyers tend to be higher than those of domestic buyers, Florida Realtors said.
A statistic for mortgage originators to be aware of is that approximately 63% of the group’s members have international clients, compared with a national average of 27%. Furthermore, one-third of Florida Realtors said international transactions made up more than one-quarter of their business.
More than three in 10 said the percentage of international clients in the state have increased in the last five years. Buyers from Canada made up 30% of this market, by far the largest group; the next largest comes from Venezuela, 8%.
What might not be good news for mortgage originators is that 84% of the sales are cash transactions.
