Chinese investors have been snapping up real estate in the world's most important cities this year. While it's easy to dismiss rich foreign buyers as the dumb money in any market, these investors are taking a sensible approach.
Real-Estate：不动产，房地产 snap up：抢购
After earning big profits at home, Chinese investors are looking abroad for safer assets that offer steady returns. They are shifting their increasingly valuable currency out of China's expensive property market and into the likes of Manhattan and San Francisco∪bargains by comparison.
'China is not growing at the same velocity, so companies are looking at other markets to supplement that growth,' said Marc Giuffrida, an executive director at real-estate services firm CBRE, who was involved in many of the China outbound property deals this year. 'Investors and developers are prepared to take lower investment returns in global gateway markets compared to China, because they are trading off to get greater stability, transparency and liquidity.'
liquidity：流动性，流动资产
Chinese companies poured $7.7 billion into commercial and residential buildings abroad in the first three quarters of 2013, 46% more than in all of 2012 and more than three times as much as in 2011, according to CBRE.
Last week, Shanghai conglomerate Fosun International Ltd. 0656.HK +3.23% said it is buying One Chase Manhattan Plaza, a landmark office tower in the Wall Street area, for $725 million. That's $330 a square foot, a third less than last year's average price for Shanghai office buildings, according to China Office Research Center, a think tank.
conglomerate：企业集团，聚合物
Chinese individuals looking for bargains and safe places for their savings are likewise finding them abroad. Shanghai entrepreneur David Li, who owns more than a dozen apartments in China, bought three in San Francisco in 2011 for a total of $1 million. They have since appreciated 30%, while delivering a 6% yield, he said.
Now he is looking to invest more, this time for his own use. Mr. Li is seeking financing to buy a $1.5 million retirement home near San Francisco's Chinatown, though he speaks little English and hasn't lived abroad.
'I don't really want to leave China, but I need an exit strategy in case things go wrong in China,' said Mr. Li, whose businesses range from education centers to retirement homes. 'I make my money in China and invest it in the U.S.∪it is a once-in-a-century opportunity.'
The flurry of deals, concentrated in top global cities, may remind people of the disastrous U.S. real-estate deals by Japanese investors in the 1980s, such as the ill-timed purchases of Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach Golf Links.
But better-timed foreign investments can do well. For example, Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, profited handsomely from developing the former site of Vancouver's Expo 86 world's fair, as did Hong Kong jewelry tycoon Cheng Yu-tung from an investment in a large 1990s development in Manhattan, known as Riverside South or Trump Place.
tycoon：巨头，富豪
'Developed markets look very attractive,' said Michael Klibaner, head of research of Greater China for real-estate-services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. JLL -0.77% 'It looks like these are sensible purchases.'
Ambitious Chinese companies are making the London and New York markets look more like that of China∪literally. Chinese-style skyscrapers are popping up in formerly low-density areas in the U.K. and Australia. Commercial-property developer Dalian Wanda Group is investing $1 billion to launch a luxury hotel in London, which will be the tallest in Western Europe.
skyscrapers：摩天大厦
State-owned Greenland Group from Shanghai is pouring $5 billion into a commercial and residential project in Brooklyn called Atlantic Yards. The massive urban-redevelopment effort may look daunting to Americans but less so to Chinese, given how so many of their cities have essentially been rebuilt in the past decade.
daunting：使人气馁的，令人生畏的
The Chinese money is flowing to areas with high concentrations of Chinese immigrants∪cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and London. For clues on where elite Chinese are headed next, just look at where they are going to school.
'We see a strong connection between where the leadership of the companies was educated and where they are buying,' Mr. Giuffrida said. 'They feel they understand the market and are comfortable to take on the risk.'
In 2012, according to a survey by China's largest education portal, EOL, the leading destination for Chinese outbound students was the U.S., which drew 30% of them, followed by the U.K. (21%) and Australia (13%).