Miami Still King to International Homebuyers
Although foreign buyers seem to be slightly less interested in Miami properties compared to the year before, Miami retains its spot as the most sought-after destination by international home buyers.
By Georgiana Mihaila, Associate Editor
Although foreign buyers seem to be slightly less interested in Miami properties compared to last year, Miami retains its spot as the most sought-after destination by international home buyers.
According to the International House Hunter Report released by Trulia earlier this week, Miami is still the no. 1 U.S. metro area researched by potential buyers, despite the rising home prices. In conducting the study, Trulia—an online marketplace for homebuyers, sellers, renters, and real estate professionals—looked at all home searches performed on its website between April 1, 2012, and March 31, 2013.
Results showed that searches from outside the U.S. accounted for 4.3 percent of all searches, with more than 25 percent of searches in a handful of truly global neighborhoods—with Brickell Ave/Brickell Key, Biscayne Blvd., Miami Beach/South Beach, and Miami Beach/Mid-Beach making it to the list.
While the entire state of Florida dominates the list of favorite U.S. destinations for international buyers, this interest appears to have decreased by 4 percent in the past year. However this is credited to the rising home prices, and has been the case for nearly all markets, except for Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the foreign share of search traffic increased.
Where do the buyers come from? Well, the largest share of foreign home searches over the past one-year period came from Canada (19 percent), the United Kingdom (9 percent), and Germany (5 percent), but interest has fallen or stagnated in these North American and European countries. Home searches are on the rise from lower- and middle-income countries with strong economic growth and stronger spending power. In the past year, the share of searches from Nigeria, India, Russia, the Philippines, and China all climbed by more than 15 percent year over year.
