(Ecns.cn)--To revitalize the U.S. economy and shore up the property sector, U.S. senators Charles Schumer and Mike Lee officially proposed a bill to Congress in November that would give foreigners a three-year "homeowner visa" if they spent at least half a million dollars on a house. These foreign homeowners would be able to renew their visa every three years. The foreign buyer's children would be entitled to attend an American public primary or high school.
It is not certain whether the bill will be passed, but there is no doubt many Chinese are already on property shopping trips to the U.S., reports Southern Metropolis Weekly.
Overseas buyers invested over U.S. $ 82 billion in U.S. property between March 2010 and March 2011, confirms the National Association of Realtors (NAR). In terms of trading volume, only Canadians have outbought the Chinese, whose second place market share was nine percent with U.S. $ 7.38 billion invested.
A Beijinger's cross-border housing story
In 2003, Guo Yuan, a middle-aged Beijing citizen, bought her second home near the city's fourth ring road at 8,000 yuan per square meter. Zhu Yuan's attitude was "No matter what the future brings, we need to keep a house in the center area of the capital, either to live in or save for our son."
At the end of 2009, Guo Yuan, who passed by property agencies as a matter of course, noticed prices around the fourth ring had leapt to 40,000 yuan per square meter. Guo Yuan was impressed not only by the sky-high values but how easy it was to sell a house with so many realtors on the hunt for resources to list.
In the meantime, she heard from her son David who was studying at the University of California that the U.S. property market had fallen to its lowest point since 2006. Guo made a snap decision to sell high in Beijing, buy low in the U.S.
Guo's second home in Beijing sold at the end of 2009 according to plan. The market was so hot, she says she showed the house to over one hundred people within one day. By the second day Guo nailed down the deal, walking away with over 3.5 million yuan.
By early in 2010, her son David in California was competing with another buyer for a 180-square-meter single dwelling built in 2003; the price range was half what the house had been evaluated at in 2006. The competitor offered ten thousand more than David, but David offered cash. The seller chose David. What they paid for the house was only half the sale price of Guo's Beijing residence.
Guo Yuan and her son David made other comparisons between the Chinese and U.S. property sectors. In Beijing, the buyer pays the sales tax, agency fee and other expenses. But in the U.S., the agency fee was covered by the seller.
