In a pandemic world, where most business activities and travel have been, to a great extent, restricted, the downtime caused by coronavirus has allowed many of us to probe into several issues, particularly those relating to how the pandemic is affecting our own corner of the economy.
I’ve used some of the additional time afforded me by all this down-time here in Singapore to interview some Chinese veterans in the sphere of property development and understand their philosophy on overseas real estate investment. I’ve distilled their answers into seven guiding principles.
Chinese overseas investors adhere to these principles to varying degrees and the smart ones adhere to all of them. If you want to understand how to better target, serve, and sell to such investors, you’ll need to understand what moves them.
#1 – Freehold is always preferable to long-term leasehold
Return on investment, in real estate as for any other asset class, naturally depends on timing. Few investors (none, actually) know exactly the right time to enter and exit an investment, and losses incurred need time to recover.
