Real Estate Here’s the big picture, as drawn from the NAR’s Profile of International Transactions 2023. All following currency references are in U.S. dollars. ▶ All foreign home buyers spent $53.3 billion for 84,600 single residential purchases in the U.S. during the 12 months ending in March 2023. ▶ $396,400 was the median price per detached single home, townhouse or condo among all foreign buyers. That was up significantly from $280,600 in pre-Covid 2019. The median price for Canadian purchases in the survey period was at an all-time high of $572,900 in 2023 – compared to a median of $416,000 a year earlier in 2022. Please see our note on “Median versus Average.” ▶ 42 per cent of all foreign buyers paid cash, while 51 per cent of Canadians paid cash for their purchases. The highest number of cash buyers was Colombian (67 per cent). ▶ Canadians accounted for 10 per cent of all foreign buyers in U.S. real estate ($6.6 billion purchase value), compared to 13 per cent from China ($13.6 billion value) and 11 per cent from Mexico ($4.2 billion value). Over the past 10 years, residents of China and Canada have shared the number-one and number-two spots for purchases of U.S. homes. Prior to 2014, Canadian purchasers of U.S. home properties normally doubled those from China. In the recent survey, Mexico accounted for the second-largest number of purchasers of U.S. real estate, Canada was third, India was the fourth, Colombia fifth, rounded out successively by buyers from the U.K., Australia, Germany, Venezuela and Israel; these comprise the top 10. ▶ Of Canadian purchases, 75 per cent were detached single homes or townhouses, and 18 per cent were condos. Median versus Average Most realtors consider the “median” a more accurate measure of home pricing than “average” in any given area. The median is the midpoint in any given set of numbers. Half of the numbers are above and half below. In averaging, even one or two extraordinary sale prices can distort the apparent value of all others. For example, the median $572,900 listing for Canadian prices in the survey vaulted to $779,300 when averaging was used as the metric – probably due to just a few sky-high purchases. The same phenomenon occurred with China, which showed a median of $723,200 turning into an average price of $1,234,500. CSANews | SUMMER 2024 | 29
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