But Chow, who mostly serves mainland Chinese buyers, is more skeptical about any new wave of Chinese home buyers making a significant imprint. Unless they're willing to spend more than $400,000, they'll probably be disappointed in the available homes. Chinese are culturally inclined to buy new homes and prefer high-achieving school districts, demands that drive up prices.
Chow said Chinese buyers' affinity for paying in cash will benefit them during the credit crunch. Many of her mainland clients have paid with cash, often for mansions and condos in Arcadia, where they can begin the immigration process or leave their college-age children to live alone.
The Chinese do have a lot of cash to spend. The central government holds the biggest stockpile of foreign reserves in the world, nearly $2 trillion, most of it in dollars. And the Boston Consulting Group estimates that there were more than 391,000 millionaire households in mainland China last year, up from 310,000 reported the previous year.
Still, Beijing has been cautious about outward investment, given the uncertainties of the financial crisis and heavy losses that its sovereign wealth fund has sustained buying stakes in American financial institutions such as investment bank Morgan Stanley. In addition, China's economic growth has slowed sharply in recent months as the nation's exporters have been hurt by slumping U.S. demand, and China's own real estate market has been sluggish.
But home prices in the U.S. have fallen more sharply than in China, and many Chinese consider the American market highly alluring as a place to invest and live because of the United States' developed economy.
The purchasing tours in the U.S. grew out of similar trips by well-heeled Chinese back home.
Investors from Wenzhou and other entrepreneurial hot spots were known for chartering buses to visit such cities as Shanghai to shop for apartments. Now some of them are signing up with outfits like Soufun.com, the real estate website that is sponsoring the home-buying trip next month from Beijing to California and Nevada.
Liu Jian, chief operating officer at Soufun Holdings, said his group's tour would focus on homes priced between $200,000 and $300,000, just at or below the median for Southern California. More than 300 people have registered for the trip, which could last 10 days and cost each person about $2,200, excluding airfare.
