Postcode 2088 - aka Mosman - harvests continued significant Chinese residency attraction
The latest off-market $9 million plus sale on Elfrida Street, Mosman to Chinese buyers - double anything prior on the street - caps off a year of sustained buying interest in Mosman by the Chinese/Australian community. The 1,400 square metre property last sold at $2.6 million in 2004.
I make it around 18 house purchases at $2 million plus this year in Mosman, so hovering at 10% of sales.
Mosman's top sale of the year has been to a Chinese buyer who paid close to $14 million for the Middle Harbour property sold by hedge fund trader Phil Mathews.
The sale which is yet to settle was to a Shanghai businessman with children already in Sydney through Richard Simeon of Richardson & Wrench Mosman. It had last traded at $12.3 million when bought from one-time retirement village property developer Malcolm McLaurin, who'd set the then Middle Harbour waterfront record $8 million in 2001. The four-storey Julian Street property adjoins the former Joel's Boatshed.
Mathews is also selling a James Street, Mosman property which has views over Chinamans Beach, the Sydney Harbour location named after the Chinese residents who had market gardens and salt pans there until the early 1900s.
The year kicked off with developer Peter Papas selling a new house on Bay Street, Beauty Point to the Huang family from China for $12.8 million in a sale facilitated by Monika Tu of Black Diamondz.
Last month Chinese property developer Guoxun Wang and his wife Dajuan Cheng, from north-east China, bought a $5.8 million four-bedroom house on Delecta Avenue, Beauty Point in another off-market transaction, purchasingfrom Susie Danias of Danias Timber.
That one was Sydney's second golden ticket visa associated property sales that are set to increasingly flow from Australia’s scheme for attracting wealthy business migrants - the Significant Investor Visa.
This scheme is actually set to be revamped by the new Immigration Minister Scott Morrison who believes the scheme is “vague and unnecessarily prescriptive”.
Wealthy individuals applying for a Significant Investor Visa must invest at least $5 million in Commonwealth, state or territory government bonds or ASIC-regulated managed funds or invest directly in an Australian proprietary company.
But Mr Morrison says the investment criteria is under review to ensure greater flexibility and a wider range of qualifying investments. He also wants to expedite the current turnaround time of nine months by boosting the capacity for assessments once the scheme had been remodelled.
Then providing the investors spend at least 160 days in Australia over that four year period and maintain their investment in the approved fund, they can apply for a Significant Investor permanent resident visa (subclass 888)
A property purchase does not qualify as the investment.
Of course it's wrong to assume that the Chinese buyers are all foreign buyers. As Paul Sheehan pointed out in a recent SMH column the number of people in Sydney who identify as having Chinese heritage is now more than 360,000, or 8% of the population.
I also think that it's simplistic to think that foreign Chinese buyers are reckless in their buying intent. And of course they don’t enjoy any special insight into the price direction of property.
Let's not forget the Japanese splurge into Australian commercial and tourism property in the 1980s that ended, almost without exception, in dramatic losses.
