Staff Reports
Real estate purchase by international homebuyers brought $7.8 billion to the Texas economy, says a new report from Texas Realtors. From April 2018 to March 2019, Texas accounted for 10 percent of all homes purchased by international homebuyers in the United States, with 18,310 home sales out of 183,100 nationwide according to the Texas International Homebuyers Report from Texas Realtors. The U.S. saw a 31 percent decrease in the number of foreign buyer purchases compared to the last reporting period.
Texas ranked third in the nation for homes sold to international buyers, behind Florida and California, with the bulk of those buyers hailing from Mexico and India. Of all homebuyers from Mexico, 28 percent purchased a home in Texas. The next closest state, California, had 10 percent of the total homebuyers from Mexico. Among buyers from India, 13 percent chose Texas — just behind first-place Florida, with 14 percent.
On the commercial side of real estate, Texas is the third-most-popular destination for buyers who work with Realtors, according to the 2019 Commercial Real Estate International Business Trends report from the National Association of Realtors. Dallas was the fifth-most popular U.S. market for commercial real estate purchased by international buyers with a dollar volume of $2.9 billion, and Houston was ninth at $2.2 billion.
“Texas is seen as a solid state for investments due to our strong economy, business environment, and large metropolitan areas,” said Tray Bates, chairman of Texas Realtors. “Investors are interested in residential and commercial real estate in Texas where they can deploy their resources to make an attractive return. Specifically, we’re seeing international investors look to Texas for large-scale investments in subdivisions and master-planned communities.”
Early in 2019, delegates from Texas Realtors traveled to the leading international real estate development conference, Le marché international des professionnels de l’immobilier (MIPIM), in Cannes, France to meet with international real estate investors and showcase Texas’ attractive investment climate.
“One of the key learnings we brought home from MIPIM was the increasingly diversified interest in both residential and commercial real estate in Texas,” said Hanne Sagalowsky, a Realtor from Dallas and the National Association of Realtors Coordinator to Western Europe, Israel, and Turkey. “With this increased foreign interest, we want international homebuyers eyeing Texas to know that Realtors can help them navigate common issues such as taxes and currency conversion to successfully complete their real estate transaction.”
Bates concluded, “The world continues to see Texas as a strong environment for international real estate investment opportunities. Whether international buyers are seeking to purchase large-scale properties or single-family homes, they can count on Texas Realtors to help them find the right home or property.”
