An unexpected increase in Chinese property buyers is moving Singapore’s real-estate market, in the latest sign of the effects of Chinese money elsewhere in Asia.
For years, Indonesians and Malaysians were the dominant foreign property buyers in Singapore, a rich Southeast Asian city-state that is widely regarded as one of the safest places in Asia to park capital, thanks to its stable political environment and predictable laws.
Over the past year or so, though, Chinese investors have leapfrogged those and other buyers to become the biggest foreign source of property sales, accounting for 32% of foreign buyers in the first half of 2011, up from just 8% in 2007. Some of the latest residential sales exceeded five million Singapore dollars US$3.8 million, according to agents, including what local media reports say was the S$36 million purchase of a 15,000-square-foot bungalow plot in the city’s posh Sentosa Cove.