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  • They save all the best units for us to sell.

  • You can't even find these units on the website.

  • I've been given access to an event that is selling units inside a luxury Manhattan condominium,

  • a building that hasn't even been completed yet.

  • The building is 125 Greenwich street, it's an 88-story residence going up in New York's financial district.

  • But, this event isn't in New York.

  • It's in Hong Kong.

  • That's why we think the dollar will basically be very strong going forward.

  • The Chinese are the number one foreign buyers of U.S. homes.

  • And it's not uncommon for firms to promote U.S. residential properties to investors

  • in Mainland China and here in Hong Kong.

  • If you want to preserve your wealth, this is the place to be and Manhattan is the place, the key place.

  • This event is hosted by Asia Bankers Club and its several business units.

  • The whole aim is to educate buyers about the New York real estate market, and of course, sell condos.

  • And in some cases, deals happen right on the spot.

  • Damian Sung of Asia Bankers Club is here to educate potential buyers.

  • What happens after the seminar?

  • So after the seminar, people will come out. They'll find their relationship managers.

  • Then they'll sit down and they'll go over picking their units, going over the taxes,

  • any other extra questions they might have.

  • Kingston Lai is the founder and CEO of the company.

  • Well, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market with the trade war and a lot of things going on, so naturally,

  • investors here are looking for safe haven assets where they can actually park their money.

  • ...The U.S., New York is still one of the very few markets to actually still offer financing to Chinese investors.

  • It's not about generating huge growth in their wealth, but it's more about preserving their wealth.

  • That's why they look into New York and the U.S. dollar specifically.

  • Thirty of the 273 units in this building were set aside for these private firms to sell.

  • In fact, at the time of the event, those units weren't even available to U.S. buyers.

  • Scott Allison of real estate company Douglas Elliman says foreign buyers

  • have been an institution in New York for as long as he can remember.

  • You always have one group. If it's not the Japanese, it's the Brazilians or it's the French.

  • Most recently it's been a lot of Venezuelans because of the unrest there, so you always have

  • foreigners buying in New York. It's a very important part of our market, primarily the condo market.

  • It's one of the reasons that whenever there's been ups and downs in other parts of the U.S. real estate market,

  • New York is usually able to weather it.

  • Yet more than half of the people here have never even been to New York before.

  • Now how many of you guys here are at least familiar with New York?

  • Have you lived there? Anybody?

  • So how will this work?

  • Photos are the best education for Hong Kong people because if people haven't been to New York,

  • they don't know what's where.

  • So giving them photos, they can actually see, “Okay, this is the Stock Exchange,

  • this is the One World Trade Center, Oculus, Battery Park, Brookfield Place."

  • Guests are either invited by one of these firms or they find out through an advertisement,

  • something like this that could come across their Facebook feed.

  • On the United States map you have a total of 50 states, okay?

  • And New York state is over here.

  • The sessions here are done in both English and Chinese.

  • I've lived in both New York and Hong Kong and it's interesting to see how they compare

  • neighborhoods to help people here better understand the New York market.

  • So this is Wall Street. This is what Wall Street looks like.

  • You have the New York Stock Exchange and of course, you come here to do your IPO, Jack Ma is here

  • The event took place shortly after there were reports that Amazon

  • was preparing to announce a new headquarters in New York City.

  • At the time, the news was projected to give a boost to New York's real estate market,

  • and it even became a selling point here at the event.

  • A few months later though, Amazon would pull out of its New York expansion plans.

  • It's important to note, that Hong Kong, while a part of China,

  • operates under its own set of rules and regulations.

  • But Beijing has been cracking down on money leaving China.

  • And mainland Chinese residents are restricted to only investing $50,000 abroad annually.

  • Any more requires special permission from the government.

  • Yet China's economy is cooling.

  • What it's impacting is really the very, very, very top because the Chinese were buying the most expensive

  • apartments, we're talking the $30 million penthouses that were being built along West 57th Street, 432 Park.

  • That's a bit of a challenge now because they're pulling away from the New York market

  • because of the difficulty getting money out of China.

  • We need someone to replace the Chinese, either replace the Chinese

  • or make it easier for them to get their money out.

  • Yet money coming from China is still strong.

  • For six straight years, Chinese have been the top foreign buyers

  • in both units and dollar volume of residential housing.

  • And lately, more and more of the middle class are joining in on the trend.

  • Take the median price of a U.S. home sold to a Chinese buyer.

  • It's gone from just under $530,000 in 2017, to $439,000 the next year.

  • Is it pretty common that after just one event investors are willing to commit?

  • We have events that we did for Vietnam that we just sell out 50 units in one weekend.

  • Asia Bankers Club says a few units were sold during this weekend event,

  • but many potential buyers wanted to visit New York first.

  • The people I speak with here say that education curve is the biggest challenge they face.

  • But it's these sorts of events that hope to fix that, to ultimately convince buyers to

  • a multiple million dollar purchase on the other side of the world.

They save all the best units for us to sell.

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