Is foreign money keeping San Diego prices steady?

[34f3f3f]

Alex-angel, I am married to an Asian and what you say resonates true. I rent from my brother-in-law, who is eternally optimistic about prices, and there does seem to be a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the subject of declining prices. I wonder, in addition to what you say, if that is also due to the fact that for many Asians, English is still the “second” language and they don’t therefore have full access to the news and what is happening. I know there are plenty of news Chinese TV programs, and newspapers, but it’s often places like Piggington’s which are one step ahead of the game.

[Anonymous]

La Jolla is filled with wealthy Mexicans living full or part time. Talking to my friends who grew up in La Jolla, it is a farily recent phenomenom. However, back to the original argument, this influx of rich foreigners moving to San Diego, while significant, is not nearly enough to affect the overall real estate market here.

[forsale_2007]

You have some pretty warped impression of what kind of “immigrants” are coming here and buying homes in areas like Carmel Valley/La jolla/Del Mar. Bet you think these are bunch of salaried slaves that are on H1-B Visas, or even illegals etc.

Well, I hate to burst your bubble here. But a lot of these Asian people are richer than you or I will ever become.
When I refer to Asian, I typically mean Chinese, Korean, Japanese…..I can’t speak for the other asians as I haven’t really interacted with the others. So I wouldn’t know what they’re like and what their value system is. But Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese have very similar value systems.

A significant portion of these people coming are execs of businesses or own corps/ businesses. They don’t take out a loan out out for a $1million home. They usually pay cash. Or if they do take out a loan, it’s because they know they can beat the 30year fixed jumbo rate tucking the $1million into investments elsewhere.

And for the rest of them, a good portion of them are upper middle class with the financial means to either buy out the home outright or at least live within their means to weather any storm…

You have to understand there are some attributes about Asians that explain why they live in Carmel Valley.

1) Education and family is extremely important. As such, Asians typically want to live in an area with a superior public school system. Carmel Valley school is one of the better school systems.

2) Asians typically are much more frugal that average. You can usually tell who are the millionaires, because they’re they ones that wear in public t-shirts with holes in them and drive around in a 96 Toyota Camry or Honda Accord. They would rather be a home owner than eat out every day, spent $100/month on cable, or $500/month on a BMW lease.

3) Most of them have in-laws that live with them. As such, they need a bigger place or need to buy a second place to keep their sanity.

4) Most asian immigrant that had the means to get here are much more financially literate than the average American.

5) In case you haven’t noticed, 90% of the crap Americans buy these days is made in China. For the past 10 years we’ve been doing a great job sending our money overseas. So, it’s not just that because the dollar is devalued. Our money is literally overseas.

5) Asians typically want to live in areas have people demographically is similar to themselves. Since more Asians have been moving into Carmel Valley, this will be viral. As such, I would say a decent 4-5 bedroom Carmel Valley home in a decent location should probably be able to weather the storm pretty well. We’ll probably see some dips as people who didn’t have the means to live in a SFH in Carmel Valley get foreclosed. And some of the crappy homes in Carmel Valley will probably have problems (Palacio). Also, the Condo/Townhome market is pretty much toast because this would not be an ideal home for most Asian families with 2+ kids…

Don’t believe me?..Go visit Cupertino in the Bay Area or one particular pocket in Fremont,CA. The only reason why Cupertino is so much more ridiculously priced than neighboring Sunnyvale, San Jose, Or Santa Clara is because of the school district. And while the rest of Fremont is a horrible place to live, one particular area in Fremont with access to the Mission San Jose High School district is much more expensive than the neighboring areas. And it explains the lawsuit that several Asian parents filed when Fremont Unified tried to redraw the district lines.

Read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Boundary_Line_Redrawing_Controversy
Lesson learned: Asians are usually pretty low-key..But don’t mess around with their kid’s education and future, or you’ll get a sh*tstorm.

Anyway, from that you can deduce a couple of things. The homes around 56 corridor are probably dead (not part of Carmel Valley schools). And 4SRanch also.

[forsale_2007]

That’s so ironic.

[forsale_2007]

>Heh.
>
>I was arguing with a friend about the housing bubble (he’s a >recent buyer), whom claimed that it was just the foreign >money that was going to get wiped out. He said all the ‘white >people’ were too smart to fall for the suicide loans.
>
>Opinions are like @$$holes, after all, I guess.

Actually. Most Asians come with a checkbook.
It’s usually the rest of the people that even consider these “loans”.

[forsale_2007]

>They are also all shopping at Fashion Valley mall. I feel >like I need a translator every time I go there.

It’s probably because you can’t speak proper English and never learned real English grammar when you were in school 🙂

[forsale_2007]

>I doubt foreigners are buying property in interior San Diego. >Chinese are buying mortgage bonds. Certainly first generation >immigrants from India/China are buying in the good school >districts of Silicon Valley.

BINGO! The first intelligent thing that I read here.

[dejams]

forsale_2007, I can’t agree more with what you said about the house near good school district because I’ve lived in Fremont and Cupertino. My friend just purchased a new home about 1900 SQFT on a 3000SQFT lot for $1.1 Million in Sunnyvale. The reason for such an expensive price is homes on part of this Sunnyvale share the same school district as Cupertino. This price per sqft will dwarf the ones from Carmel Valley. Face it folks, the Asian can afford it and they can ride it out.

[forsale_2007]

Please no bashing of foreigners. I do notice that 90% of people that look at open homes or model tours are Asian. Now it makes sense because even selling a 500 sqft pad in Hong Kong will net you $1 million.

My question is. I always wondered where the Asian families get their money from because they seem to be the only ones buying now.

 

BINGO! Another sign on intelligence here.

 

To give you some insight. My sister-in-law living in China purchased a waterfront property in Shanghai for $500k USD a few yeas back. She rents it out to Foreign expat execs for $4000/month USD. The Chinese government has no income tax (yet) on this. So she also owns a home here.

The irony is that dollar devaluation aside, we (americans) are poorer these days.

While a lot of us continue to whine here about how prices are so high and they can't afford to live here, there are plenty of immigrants that have no problem doing this. Go figure.

 

[forsale_2007]

Dude, I’m second gen. I might not be as frugal as my parents.

But also, my wife and I also make a heck of a lot more than our parents did.

I guess those, it’s all about living within your means. And a lot of people haven’t figured that one out yet.

As are a the third generation…Well, that’s may be a problem.

[34f3f3f]

My question is. I always wondered where the Asian families get their money from because they seem to be the only ones buying now.

When I go out with my Asian wife and her family, talk is about money and little else. If you buy anything you will be grilled about how much you paid and invariably told where you could have bought it cheaper. Chinese supermarkets are huge, offer a huge variety, and are much cheaper. A party of eight can eat in a Chinese restaurant for the same price as two in your average posh nosh joint. Houses, cars and education are priorities, but I am often surprised at how frugally some homes are furnished. So in answer to the above question, one answer may lie in home economics, as much as it does in earnings. Taiwanese women are great with money and run very tight ships. There is a large sub economy that exists, that allows the Asian community both to be semi autonomous and frugal, thus enabling leverage in the economy as a whole.

[PerryChase]

forsale_2007, you make it sound like Asians all live in million dollar homes. There’s some truth to what you’re saying but the people you’re talking about are a small minority. I happen to know some Taiwanese people whose parents bought expensive houses for them so they could go to UC Irvine. The parents would visit twice a year.

But the reality is much different. All you have to do it go to Monterey Park and Chinatown to see how the preponderance of Asians live — not very well.

A Taiwanese friend of mine is a doctor at a hospital in Chinatown, NYC. He tells me that many of the patients are illegals with no health coverage. Many of them have chronic disease but show up at hospital only when their health is so bad that they can’t take it anymore. In New York, poor Chinese are all over Chinatown and Flushing. In California you don’t see the concentration of poor people because we live spread out and far apart from one another.

Foreigners, just like American citizens and Resident Aliens have been buying properties because they saw RE as a good investment. The ones who don’t live here will be the earlier sellers, IMO.

[forsale_2007]

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.

[forsale_2007]

When I go out with my Asian wife and her family, talk is about money and little else. If you buy anything you will be grilled about how much you paid and invariably told where you could have bought it cheaper. Chinese supermarkets are huge, offer a huge variety, and are much cheaper. A party of eight can eat in a Chinese restaurant for the same price as two in your average posh nosh joint. Houses, cars and education are priorities, but I am often surprised at how frugally some homes are furnished. So in answer to the above question, one answer may lie in home economics, as much as it does in earnings. Taiwanese women are great with money and run very tight ships. There is a large sub economy that exists, that allows the Asian community both to be semi autonomous and frugal, thus enabling leverage in the economy as a whole.

 

 

Lol…. I feel sorry for you man. Because even though I'm Chinese, I was born here and I always found it tacky that Chinese people seem to be incapable of having dinner with other Chinese without somehow talking about money. You have to understand, it's part of the DNA. There was joke my friend told me:

A Chinese businessman drives his Mercedes to a bank in New York City. He talks to his banker and says that he wants to borrow $1000 for two weeks. As collateral he will offer is entire car and promises to pay interest.

His banker appears puzzled, because the businessman is extremely wealthy. But nevertheless, the businessman insists, and the banker oblige. The banker takes his car,stores it, and and gives the businessman $1000.

Two weeks later, the businessman returns to the bank, and sees the banker. He returns $1000 plus $15 in interest payment and fees. The banker retrieves the car from storage and hands the businessman the key. Still puzzled, the banker asks

Banker: Excuse me for asking. You own a successful business and clearly do not have any financial problems. Why did you need to borrow $1000?

Chinese Businessman: I needed to go on a trip for two weeks. Where else in New York City would I be able to park my car for $2 a day? Ah the mind of a Chinese.

[sdrealtor]

Thats classic!

[Author]

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