Soaring Sales See China’s Biggest Developers Go Global

• 31 December 2015
• Property Focus
• 1456 Views

Chinese buyers spent more on a commercial real estate outside China than in the country for the first time last year.

Sales for Greenland Group and China Vanke, China’s two largest property developers, have both broken through the US$35bn mark.

According to figures released by property research institute China Index Academy, and reported in Global Construction Review, turnover at the state-owned Greenland Group rose 48 percent to US$38bn, and sales at the listed residential developer China Vanke rose 23 percent to US$35bn.

There is evidence that the biggest developers are becoming a force in global property markets. Research by Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) released on 26 January predicted that Chinese investors would spend a total of US$20bn on the foreign property; a rise of 21 percent on 2014, which itself was a 46 percent increase on 2013.

According to JLL, Europe topped the list of favorite investment destinations last year, attracting over US$5.5bn. However, Australia emerged as a fast-growing market, with more than US$3bn flowing into the country, and Sydney becoming the second biggest recipient of Chinese money after London; US$2.5bn was allocated to the Americas.

Darren Xia, head of JLL’s International Capital Group, China said: “Chinese real estate investors used 2014 to internationalize their portfolios. Notably, activity once again focused on the major cities of the world, which Chinese investors now know well, such as London, Sydney, and the major US metropolitans of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago”.