And now they buy those Sydney homes with Bitcoin
An Australian real estate agency is trying to attract Chinese home buyers by allowing them to make their down payments with the popular bitcoin virtual currency.
According to a story this week in The Australian, Forsyth Real Estate, a 115 year-old property brokerage in Sydney, is willing to take payments in bitcoin due to demand from Chinese investors for using the high-tech payment system, and for the ability to reduce banking charges.
“We’ve taken on bitcoin due to the influx of lots of prospective buyers from overseas on the Sydney market,” a spokeswoman for the agency said in the Australian media report.
Although China’s central bank barred financial institutions from handling bitcoin transactions in December last year, the currency remains popular on the grey market with bitcoin hubs huobi.com and btcchina.com continue to operate and host their servers in the country.
The virtual currency offers Chinese investor another possible route for getting around restrictions on moving capital across borders, as well as removing the issue of obtaining foreign exchange to acquire property overseas.
A report earlier this year by Credit Suisse predicted that Chinese buyers will purchase US$39.54 billion worth of Australian residential property over the next seven years. The investment bank estimates that 12 per cent of all new housing purchases throughout the country, and up to 18 per cent in Sydney and 14 per cent in Melbourne are by Chinese buyers.
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