Coming to America – To Buy Homes

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Nearly one in five REALTORS® has sold a home to an international client in the past year according to NAR’s 2007 Profile of International Home Buying Activity. This is the most comprehensive research NAR has ever conducted to explore the characteristics of second-home purchases in the United States made by international clients. Last year, most international home buyers purchased single-family homes or townhomes, and like most domestic home buyers, they financed their purchase. However, they showed stronger preferences for condos/apartments when compared to U.S. buyers. Twenty-eight percent of foreign buyers bought their houses with cash, compared to 8 percent of U.S. buyers.

Although we’ve had our economic ups and downs in this city, we have always been a city of dynamic change, growth, controversy and fame. Today, most of us are familiar with the national mortgage crisis, but few of us think of the opportunities that abound for the cash-rich.

With a weak dollar compared to other well-known currencies, foreign buyers have hit the headlines in recent months with multi-billion-dollar investments in major U.S. projects such as the $6-billion Dubai investment in the MGM CityCenter on the Strip. But how does that trickle down to affect the single-unit purchases we rarely hear about? With the U.S. dollar weakening against foreign currencies, international investors are snapping up many of the Strip's high-priced condos, as well as condos in the downtown Las Vegas area.

These single- and multiple-unit purchases are great values now, and they continue to breathe life into a market hurt by the single-family-home crisis in suburban areas. For this reason, the urban areas suffer fewer foreclosures, less depreciation, and weather economic distress much better. The new U.S. Real Estate economy is now the foreign investors’ sandbox, and world-famous Las Vegas with its massive potential is ripe for the picking.

Individual foreign buyers are looking for second homes and vacation homes in the Las Vegas market. With the dollar weak, foreign investors have greater purchasing power than they might normally have.