I would actually argue that the percentage of chinese living in say chinatown would be a small percentage of the total chinese living in the US. And they represent only a part of the demographics of chinese (or asians for that matter). .Also, if you’re going to include Monterey Park, you might as well include San Marino, Hacienda Heights, Palos Verdes, Torrance, Rolling Hills Estates. In LA, asians are everywhere. I never understood why tourists want to visit chinatowns. It’s so stereotypical. It’s like me wanting to go visit Mississippi and conclude that that represents a typical white person. (humm, maybe i can start a tour for asian tourists there )..
But regardless, I’m not saying all Asians live in million dollar homes. I’m merrily pointing out that the ones you’re seeing in places like Carmel Valley/LJ/etc are the ones that “have made it”.. They’re the best of the best, and they bring a lot of new money from Asia. Several of them don’t have the same constraints that the first wave of immigrants do. Heck, they don’t have constraints that a lot of us U.S. salaried employees or constraints a lot of doctors and lawyes have.
The ones that are buying homes in Carmel Valley/LJ/DelMar…they’re mostly doing it (1) because they have money (2) they have a family to raise. It’s no different that any other type of upper incoming folks, except you happen to see a lot more these days because places like China and Korea have created a lot of rich people (that exploited a lot of poor people still stuck there). These people you see in Carmel Valley and the like run companies that supply the crap Americans buy at Walmart,Sears,Costco,etc,etc,etc. And if they are not those business owners, they’relawyers, doctors, qualcomm PHD engineers that made millions off of stock options. And if their not these folks, they are folks like my parents who had a relatively good salaried career that were extremely disciplined financially. I would bet less than 1% of all Asians(Chinese,Korean,Japanese) that would live in Carmel Valley would be on a SubPrime mortgage. Most Chinese Korean and Japanese that have any decent educational background and the means to even consider living in areas like Carmel Valley,LJ/DelMar typically hate feeling like they live in debt, so the would be even reluctant to do 5/1 ARMS.
We were struggling with whether we should take out a loan for pay our home off outright too. But when your mortgage is 5.625% for 30years, and your financial planner is doing 10-15% year, we opted to take the loan and am currently in no hurry to pay this thing off. Plus, without any type of mortgage/property tax, we would get killed on our taxes.
Plus my daughter will need to go to a good school a few years from now- priceless.
Again I can’t comment on other Asians(Filipino, Vietnamese,Thai etc), because I frankly don’t have too many friends that are, and none of my neighbors are either.
So I don’t know if their value systems would be the same. And like I said, I tend to associate with other people who have similar backgrounds and values to me and my wife, regardless of race. (I forgot to include Indians in these “new immigrants too”. Likewise, they too are making up the new upper middle class.)
Is the house market going to fall? Well, imho yes I think so. Are immigrants going to “save” the housing market? Nope, especially areas with a crappy school district or homes with bad Feng Shui. So, places like Chula Vista and possibly even 4SRanch are screwed.
But, they’ll probably end up proping up a few areas here and there.
