I don’t think the average Chinese citizen who bought RE in the US (most of whom still live in China) are attracted to “trophy” properties. They want rental income from bread-and-butter real estate investments, plain and simple. Chinese investors cleaned up big time in over 20 East LA County cities during the recent downturn of 2009 through early 2012. This group bought up SFRs and condos en masse, almost all of which were built from 1950 to 1985. The vast majority of these investors still live in China to this day. They have hired local property managers who mainly speak Mandarin, Tagalog, English and Spanish to keep them filled and properly managed.

Oh, and btw, I am told that almost all of these investors bought these properties sight unseen (from internet pics and with a local agent). They didn’t particularly care about the condition and did whatever improvements were necessary after COE (thru their property mgr) to immediately get their propert(ies) advertised for rent.

These Chinese investors weren’t stupid. In hindsight, almost all of the properties in their new RE portfolios (in LA County) turned out to be cash cows 🙂