Foreign Investors Plant $10B in US Soil

NEW YORK CITY-Organizations ranging from the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate to Deloitte have predicted it over the past several months, and now the data from Real Capital Analytics bear it out. Cross-border acquisitions in the US reached $10.1 billion over the past year, not including minority interests that foreign investors bought to the tune of $6.6 billion, RCA says. That’s a 138% gain over the year prior, although it’s only one-quarter of the volume seen at the market’s peak, according to RCA.

Not surprisingly, the lion’s share of volume is occurring in the major markets, led by the New York City metro area with $3.3 billion, or nearly one-third of the total, a figure that’s up nearly 600% year-over-year. The total doesn’t include the $485 million that Fosterlane Management, the institutional real estate arm of the Kuwait Investment Authority, is paying Hines to buy 750 Seventh Ave. in Midtown Manhattan. Houston-based Hines announced the deal late last week.