A new wave of buyers from China is snapping up luxury properties across the U.S., injecting billions of dollars into the country’s residential-real-estate market. Buyers from China and Hong Kong accounted for $9 billion of U.S. home sales in the 12 months ending in March – up 89% from 2010, making them the second-largest group of foreign buyers of U.S. homes behind Canadians, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

As a result, the industry is scrambling to woo the new buyers – with some developers installing wok kitchens, following feng shui principles, putting lucky numbers on high-quality units and packaging property sales with government programs to spur foreign investment. Some real estate agencies are flying representatives to China and even hiring Mandarin-speaking agents.  From New York, Miami to LA, buyers from the East are radically changing the landscape. Over the last six months in New York, several full-floor apartments in a new Manhattan high rise called One57, each with a price tag of roughly $50 million, have gone into contract with Chinese buyers, according to the Wall Street Journal. In order to appeal to the Chinese belief that eight is the luckiest number, One57 has put many of its most luxurious apartments on the 80th through 88th floors. Of note, apartment 88 is under contract to a Chinese buyer for around $50 million!

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Riccardo Ravasini