Real Estate Market in Australia

''Australia is the flavour of the month amongst the Chinese investors,'' Mr Jonston, 41, said yesterday. ''They love property and there's plenty of money over there so they're good clients to have.'' 
While Chinese buyers have fuelled the top-end real estate revival, they are also courting controversy, with some local house hunters complaining they are being priced out by foreigners who have no intention of living in their new properties.

The report shows that residential sale volumes decreased by 15.1% in 2008 and the strongest decrease started last October, after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. To be affected by the crisis are also the prices of properties for sale in Italy , although without the free fall which has been registered in the markets in Europe and in the US, that, for the first time after a decade, have decreased by 2.2% for new properties and 2.4% for resale properties.

Chinese share prices reached a peak in 2007, and since then many of them have dropped around half their value.We know that usually, the general economy and property development and investment is intimately linked, so this does not bode well for China property development. We can see companies closing branches around the country, and a sharp increase in the number of homes and sites for sale, along with a resulting drop in prices. These factors combined make it seem that a market crunch in China is on the cards for the next year. 

First-time Russian overseas buyers are now looking at South-East Asia and particularly the Philippines. Persistent bad weather has also encouraged people to buy homes in places where sunshine can be relied on and prices are a fraction of those in Europe. Real Estates agents in the Philippines sees the next growth market for real estate in the country coming from Russian nationals on the back of the marked increase in first time property buyers from Russia entering the Philippines. 

The report, compiled by Colliers International, shows that Russian purchasers accounted for a significant 35.2 million Australian dollars ($30.7 million, at the time of writing) of the 269.2 million Australian dollars ($235 million) invested by internationals in the city in the last financial year.