The Globalisation of Real Estate

Book excerpt: Individual foreign investment in residential real estate by new middle-class and super-rich investors is re-emerging as a key issue in academic, policy and public debates around the world. At its most abstract, global real estate is increasingly thought of as a liquid asset class that is targeted by foreign individual investors who are seeking to diversify their investment portfolios. But foreign investors are also motivated by intergenerational familial security, transnational migration strategies and short-term educational plans, which are all closely entwined with global real estate investment. Government and local public responses to the latest manifestation of global real estate investment have taken different forms. These range from pro-foreign investment, primarily justified on geopolitical and macro-economic grounds, to anti-foreign investment for reasons such as mitigating public dissent and protecting the local housing market. Within this changing geopolitical context, this book offers a diverse range of case studies from Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Russia, Australia and Korea. It will be of interest to academics, policymakers and university students who are interested in the globalisation of local real estate. The chapters in this book were originally published in the International Journal of Housing Policy.