There’s been a large increase this year in Chinese buyers looking for property in the Seattle area, and a new tax on foreign buyers in Vancouver, B.C., is expected to amplify the trend.
By Mike Rosenberg Seattle Times business reporter
A growing wave of money from China and other foreign countries is pouring into the Seattle-area housing market, helping drive home prices even higher. And since July a new tax on international buyers in Vancouver, B.C., long a popular market for home seekers from China, has focused even more global interest here.
Seattle saw more inquiries from mainland-Chinese homebuyers than any other American city in four of the last seven months, according to Juwai.com, China’s biggest real-estate site for buyers looking in North America.
Historically, Seattle had attracted less real-estate money from China than Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
But the region’s upward shift only accelerated after British Columbia enacted a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers in the Vancouver metro area. Searches by Chinese home seekers for Seattle have more than doubled, while they’ve been cut nearly in half in Vancouver, Juwai says.