New overseas buyers from UK, US, Singapore and Hong Kong could impact Aussie housing prices

Beachside towns like Byron Bay are on the radar as overseas buyers look to take advantage of the better economic conditions in Australia.

Chinese buyers helped to drive up Aussie property prices before the government started to clamp down, but there are plenty of new buyers from other countries swarming in.

Investors from the US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong have been furiously searching for homes on the Australia property market.

Interest in Australian property climbed in 2020 with the biggest jump in searches on realestate.com.au from the US at 57 per cent, a report from the REA Group found.

Hong Kong followed at 17 per cent and the third highest was Singapore at 15 per cent.

With fewer cases of COVID-19 in Australia and a quick recovery from recession, cashed up expats looking to return could be behind the surge, said Nerida Conisbee, chief economist at realestate.com.au.

“The US has a lot of political problems, which has settled down now, and the UK had their biggest GPD decline in 300 years so it’s a huge problem there and it could be a lot of people potentially looking to move to Australia because of better economic conditions,” she explained.

“Hong Kong has a very challenging political situation there at the moment and a challenging economic situation, but Hong Kong is the one that we would see most likely flow through to people moving here. Asian buyers tend to be bigger buyers when searching for property overseas.”

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This property at 9 Granadilla St, Macgregor in QLD was one of the most viewed on realestate.com.au by overseas buyers. Picture: Supplied

But she said first-time home buyers don’t need to worry as Hong Kong buyers tend to look at off the plan developments of high end projects.

“It’s interesting looking at the US property search as one of the top destinations is Byron Bay, so there is potentially more movement to beach side areas from the US and UK following reopening of borders,” she said.

“The more immediate impact is a lot luxury off the plan developers — the type of Asian buyers looking to buy at a higher price points — rather than investment grade stock.”

Meanwhile, interest from China in Australian property continued to plummet, dropping by 39 per cent over the past 12 months.

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53 Baptist St Redfern auction, sold for $1.5m but winning bidder, Melanie East, was buying for a friend that was overseas. Picture: News Corp Australia

Ms Conisbee said Chinese investment hadn’t come back since around 2018, due to both Australian and Chinese government policies, including restrictions making it hard to get money out of the country.

The Royal Commission into the Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Finance Services Industry also began in 2017, she added.

“It was hard to get finance as banks put in restrictions for lending, there was a lot of additional taxes on foreign buyers like vacant property taxes and additional stamp duty which financially it made it less viable, and the other reason too is that Chinese buyers, they dropped off in Australia and became more active elsewhere,” she said.

“At this stage there is nothing that has really changed to entice them back so I don’t think they will be back in droves anytime soon.”