Back in 2007, when I was relocating from London to New York, I bid against a Brazilian and a German for my Brooklyn brownstone. I thought that would be the high-water mark for international buyers interested in fixer-up properties a good 45 minutes from midtown Manhattan, but I was wrong.
These days, I regularly wake to leaflets from Chinese property developers dumped on my front stoop, offering to buy homes for cash. And this even after Beijing has put various restrictions on the outflow of capital, in an attempt to prop up its currency.
Foreign money has always played a huge role in luxury property markets like Manhattan and London. While international buyers in New York tend to come and go depending on the strength of the dollar relative to their local currency, veteran appraiser Jonathan Miller, the president and chief executive of Miller Samuel, tells me that foreign buyers over the past few years have come to represent a baseline 15 per cent of the Manhattan luxury market.