Foreigners invested more than $600 million in outer-borough real estate through the first half of the year, the most ever, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. Brooklyn received the vast majority of that speculation.
Still it’s easier to find investors from abroad for Manhattan, less so for Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. But those areas have great fundamentals.
These days, average rents in Brooklyn are basically at Manhattan levels, and there seems to be no ceiling in sight for Brooklyn home prices. Moreover, so-called creative firms have smiled on the borough, moving their laid-back offices to super-trendy neighborhoods like Dumbo, Williamsburg and Greenpoint. No question, Brooklyn is an international brand with clout, and some foreign property investors have taken notice.
Most notably, the Shanghai-based, government-backed Greenland Group bought a 70 percent stake in the residential portion of Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project — now rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn — for $200 million last December.
Perhaps a sign of just how established the borough has become in the minds of some world investors, Greenland passed up Manhattan, making the buy its first New York City venture.
Even more so than in Brooklyn, Queens, with its vast immigrant communities, attracts foreign investors through overseas networks of family and friends, often crowd-funding their buys.
Still, the recent explosion of development in Long Island City — some 500 condo units and 10,000 rental units are in the pipeline — promises to place the borough more prominently on the world map. In fact, last year an Australian buyer paid $3.1 million in cash for a penthouse at The View in Long Island City. At the time, it was the most ever paid for a condo in Queens.
In the third quarter of the year, the average price of a luxury home in Queens leapt more than 18 percent from last year, to $1.11 million.
However, with prices at record levels in Manhattan and Brooklyn, many in the industry are speculating that the borough will soon see more foreign interest.
But at least for now, Manhattan remains the hub of international commercial and residential investment, of course.
Overseas investors of all nationalities invested some $5.5 billion into Manhattan office towers in 2013, according to a report from Colliers International.