Here are some key strategies we have assisted our real estate clients to promote their projects to Asian investors which are known to be some of the most active real estate investors in today’s market.
First, understand Asian investors’ behaviour!
There are 2 types of Asian real estate investors, and they are completely on the other end of the world!
1. Super speculators, I have known many of them who have no interest in living or rentals, just trade the property rights, they pay the downpayment and sell them to the next investors for a quick 10% to 20% profit, it’s like sharemarket..personally, I think there are better ways to trade, and there are also property derivatives available, but these kind of investors are around, and they are only interested in apartments, condos, and new developments only.
2. Income producers: By large, Asian investors are conservative; and as rental yield in Asia and Australia are always very low because of the high cost associated; rental yield in Australia or Asia hovers around 1% to 2% in most cases..some areas like SE Asia have little better rental yield, but still low compared to North American residential markets.
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One common issue I have been asked a lot when clients from North America or Europe ask about setting up a Chinese language website, they often encounter problems in China, as it is a controlled environment; and getting a hosting account or even registering a domain name in China can take weeks; once your website is up and running there; they also experience frequent technical problems whenever the government wants to shut down a website.
It is a very common and can be a very frustrating problem. My friend launched a kids website from Australia for instance, it is a pure information only website; but the server of which its website is sharing contains some news websites which are on Chinese Government’s blacklist, consequently, her website was disallowed in China.
If you are launching a Chinese language website, you may consider choosing to have them hosted outside China, like Taiwan or Hong Kong; although they are also being monitored very closely.
Make sure your contents do not share any political views about China, even in the news section, as that can put your site into blacklist very quickly.
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Huh? What kind of comparison is this? How can the 2 cities be put together as comparison?
As a regular visitor, and also someone who had lived in LA before, I feel the general perception about LA is really wrong. Yes, the city is big, massive, lots of traffic, but there are so many beautiful places in LA, and it is a great city. Like every city, LA has really bad areas, which you don;t want to go there in the evening.
Likewise, Sydney also has really bad areas plagued with gang violence, drug trafficking, some areas are so bad, that no-one dars to go to the train station after 4pm. My friend’s mom unfortunately lost her life while doing grocery shopping in one area, where she was attached by a bag-snatcher.
So, put those negative things aside; is LA good to live?
1. Well, traffic is bad in every big city, and LA is no exception. However, its massive high-way systems is not a bad solution after-all. LA is also a big city with multiple downtowns, many travel to their nearby areas for works or schools; unlike other cities where everyone “need” to go do downtown. In this regard, the traffic is actually not too bad for local travelling.
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Another 2 cities that I have both lived in, I have basically lived in all capital cities in Australia..Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, even Hobart in Tasmania. Are the cities really different in Australia? Not really.
Brisbane and Melbourne “pair” offers an interesting comparison, one is located at the north while the other in the far south. Needless to say, the weather is completely different.
Brisbane is better because…
1. Warmer weather if you like warmer weather (not for me)..I feel summer is way too hot in QLD, but then some people really love it.
2. Beautiful beaches, have to admit that the beaches are better in QLD, even better than Sydney, I found best time to visit beaches is actually winter…summer is scorching and you can get heat stress very easily.
3. They said it’s better for families, not sure why, but there is a general perception that Brisbane is easier to raise families..but living cost has climbed a lot there, at much faster rate than other Aussie cities.
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HST was recently introduced in Canada and it had raised a lot of criticisms..GST was introduced in Australia a decade ago and to be honest, a lot of people including myself think it was grossly mismanaged which started the long Living-Cost climb in Australia.
GST vs HST
1. When GST was introduced, the Government was too naieve to think every Australian merchants are honest merchants..well, they weren’t. The average inflation as the result was way over 10% set in GST, in some cases, as high as 19%, which was way out of control. The Government realized a year later and it was too late. The local carpark I went to was charging $13.00 per day, it jumped to $15.00 per day, and jumped to $17.00 per day within 12 months. On average, merchants had put on 13% inflation when GST was introduced.
2. The HST while, for some newly arrived immigrants find it annoying to work the actual amount, it is a more transparent system and requires merchants to disclose their tax. I noticed there has been almost nil impact on underlying price, fair enough, we all know we need to add 13% instead of 12% tax on top of what we have paid; which is 1% extra more than before HST was introduced.
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As we have made our decision moving from Sydney to Toronto (it was a hard decision between Toronto and Vancouver); and since a number of followers have been asking Toronto vs Sydney vs Vancouver; I thought I will run a quick comparison between the 3 cities.
Toronto has edge over Sydney in the following ways:
1. Very affordable housing price (both to buy or to rent), by moving from Sydney to Toronto, we can save around $3,000 a month just in accomodation, that’s MASSIVE saving!
Why? Good properties in Toronto will be range around $500K to $600K, there are some $1 million+ areas, but those areas in Sydney will be over $2.5 million. Rental is very cheap in Toronto, you can rent a house for less than $2,000 a month (as opposed to $3,500 to $5000 in Sydney a month) in a good area.
Interest rate in Toronto is currently around 2% (variable) or 4.5% (fixed rate); both are around 4% to 5% less than what we are paying in Sydney.
2. A lot of job prospects in Toronto: Being in the East Coast, and close to New York, Michigan, and most of major economies. Toronto has a very large economy; in particular, some industries it has more jobs & business opportunities than Sydney are: Finance, IT, Media, Graphic Designers, Software Development, Cleantech, Oil & Gas sectors; and transportation industries.
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I see that my several articles relating to Asian Marketing Strategies have attracted some readers, here are some more we would like to share. My media marketing companies, Quarter Media (in Australia) and Money Cat (outside Australia) specialize in multi-cultural marketing, so if you are interested to know about our programs; please let me know.
The social media marketing in Asian markets are completely different; and in fact, even amongst the Chinese speaking markets; they are completely different.
The major Chinese speaking markets are: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
China: The Social Media marketing market is massive and extremely fragmented, in fact, finding information in China is always frustrating as they are often loosely constructed. Social Media forums get monitored by the Government and are closed on frequently basis, there is no such as thing as Internet Freedom in China, they are governed by thousands of Government employees monitoring each day. To play safe, the best way is to join forums that belong to popular Chinese search engines, or ISPs or some of the nation’s major media companies; The first (search engines) seems to be the best strategy; and they often have very large number of users as well.
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Just came back from Downtown in Toronto. It’s an interesting feeling, when I first arrived at Union Station (really nice train service, by the way, I took bus in and took the train out, the bus is like a those tourist coach!).
My first impression about Toronto Downtown is, this is like New York City; very big, spread-out, and very tiring to walk around…
Then I hopped onto a Streetcar, and told myself, this is like Melbourne and San Francisco, it’s better than the cable car in Toronto; although SF’s cable car is more fun because of the hills…it’s like Melborune’s tram apart from it is actually a car on wheels.
Then I took the subway to the theatre and entertainment district, and it hit me immediately just like London; the scenearies, and the buildings just keep changing.
I wrapped up by going to the Harbourfront, and it feels like Darlingharbour in Sydney but with much bigger water front, Great Lakes are called Great lakes for obvious reason, it’s like an ocean!
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We have read hundreds of articles about real estate price is overpriced in Australia, and people are sick of it, renting is expensive, rate is expensive..etc. As I have lived around Australia for more than 20 years plus I have lived around different places, here are some comparisons I have put together, maybe you will then know yourself if Australia is overpriced or not.
1. Australian real estate price is very cheap compared to most of Asian economies - but you should not justify this for having a high real estate cost. In fact, Asian properties are expensive for a simple reason, they don’t have land, so it is totally incomparable.
2. We should also not to compare Australian real estate to US, even though, obviously, US real estate price looks so cheap (even before the recession), one has to understand: US is a much more populated nation (370 million and rising); therefore, in terms of urban density, they are in much better position than Australia. What does urban density mean? Well, 90% of US land have residents, and fairly spread-out, as opposed to Australia’s 90% of population are concentrated in 10% of the land, so it’s the total opposite.
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Finally able to get up this morning after 30 hours of illness, perhaps it was due to too much travelling last 3 weeks, those long flights certainly did not help my health, why is Australia so far away? And why can’t we fly through South Pole?
I always ask these questions everytime I travel, why all the civilizations are in Northern Hemisphere, and travelling from Australia is a min 8 hours trip to anywhere interesting (sorry New Zealand and Fiji).
This trip, I had enjoyed USA and Canada once a lot; the feeling was the same everytime I travelled there; which are now more than 10 times. Took kids to California Science Centre to see Mummies of the World; very scary but very informative, if you are going to California soon, this is actually not a bad exhibition..but those Pervian and South American mummies are really scary, as they remain in their original posture; which means, you will go into a room with 4 sitting mummies (with baby mummies in their hands) looking at you through hollow eyes….
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