Is a Hangzhou Car Parts Maker China’s Biggest Buyer of US Real Estate?

While companies such as Greenland Group and Dalian Wanda have grabbed global headlines for their billion dollar real estate projects in the US, a Chinese auto parts manufacturer says it has bought many more American properties than these famous developers.

Wanxiang Group, which has garnered its own news coverage for acquiring a US battery manufacturer, and for buying failed electric car maker Fisker, says that it has also invested heavily in American real estate, picking up more than 60 projects nationwide since 2010, according to a recent account in Bloomberg.

Chinese Buying Projects Both Big and Small

Despite the large number of properties that Wanxiang has purchased, the company has largely gone unnoticed in real estate circles, because of its preference for smaller-scale projects.

According to Ni Pin, president of Wanxiang’s Chicago-based US operation, the Hangzhou-based manufacturer has bought office towers, shopping centers, warehouses, homes, medical buildings and student housing, focusing on locations in the midwestern US.

However, out of these 60 projects that Wanxiang has acquired, only 17 have been recorded by real estate investment data provider, Real Capital Analytics, which tracks deals with values of $2.5 million and above.

Among those 17 properties, Wanxiang has reportedly already disposed of six of them. Ni told Bloomberg that the returns the company has enjoyed on these investments have been “very, very, very” high.

Even with RCA only tracking less than a quarter of Wanxiang’s deals, it still ranked the car parts maker second among Chinese investors in terms of transaction volume. The total value of Wanxiang’s remaining 11 properties in the US is said by the New York-based information provider to be approximately $233 million.

Flying Under the PR Radar

Although a number of research groups publish figures on Chinese investment in the US, most of them rely on public announcements and press releases in compiling their data.

Accounts published last month revealing that Chinese developer Guangzhou R&F had already purchased four US properties among more than 15 project acquisitions globally caught by surprise many observers who had been focused on larger acquisitions.

In Wanxiang’s case throughout its acquisitions of dozens of US companies in the automotive and green tech sectors, in addition to its real estate deals, Ni has reportedly never issued a press release regarding an acquisition, nor has the company ever put its name on any of its trophies.

Wanxiang’s low profile approach, and the large number of small to medium-sized deals it has pursued matches the accounts of many brokers who indicate that the largest portion of acquisitions of overseas properties by Chinese buyers, both in terms of quantity and asset value, involve private corporations conducting transactions worth US$50 million or less.

Wanxiang a Big Wheel in the Auto Sector

Despite its low profile approach to real estate, Wanxiang has attracted attention for some of its bigger deals in the automotive sector.

Just last year Ni out-gunned Richard Li, son of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, to acquired Fisker Automotive, a failed manufacturer of high end plug-in hybrid sports cars for $149.2 million.

The acquisition of Fisker was seen by many as a follow up to Wanxiang’s 2013 purchase of bankrupt electric-car battery maker for $251 million.

Despite the company’s higher profile in the automotive world, however, Ni says that real estate accounts for more than half of Wanxiang’s total investments in the US since 2010. And now the low-key tycoon says that Wanxiang is on the lookout for more.