Chinese property buyers are continuing to invest heavily in the Australian housing market despite facing restrictions to doing so from all sides.
Officials in China are trying to restrict how much the country's residents are investing overseas, while state governments in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria have introduced higher stamp duty taxes for international property buyers.
However, this has not deterred spending from China in 2017 so far, as new analysis of property market investment from Credit Suisse shows.
The company found that in New South Wales, Chinese buyers accounted for 87 per cent of all property purchases by foreign buyers between January and June this year, meaning they completely dominated the market.
Hasan Tevfik and Peter Liu, analysts with Credit Suisse, explained: "Almost 90 per cent of foreign demand is from China and there is little evidence that new capital controls by the Chinese authorities, announced in December 2016, have slowed demand for Aussie housing."
The second greatest share of foreign ownership in the New South Wales property market in the first six months of the year for a single nation went to New Zealand, which accounted for just 1.6 per cent of purchases in comparison. This was followed by Indonesia (1.5 per cent) and the UK (1.3 per cent).
Meanwhile, a variety of buyers from other parts of the world made up the remaining nine per cent.
Even though the tax imposed on buyers from some nations in Australia is rising, this is not putting foreign investors off purchasing property down under. For example, the New South Wales government has increased the tax foreign buyers face to eight per cent of the total asking price.
Mr Tevfik explained: "This is in addition to a one per cent federal fee on international buyers and then stamp duty of around four per cent for a property costing $1 million."
With these measures yet to curb spending, this suggests that the market must be continuing to look attractive to overseas buyers who believe the extra cost is worth it for the returns they will generate.
Brought To You By Steve Douglas of SMATS
