25 percent of homes sold to foreigners, analyst says

Analyst Howard Blum, a real estate investor and publisher of financial newsletters, reported that the amount of U.S. residential real estate purchased by foreign buyers is much greater than either the National Association of Realtors or Capital Economics estimate.

Blum said more than 25 percent of all homes sold today are bought by foreign cash buyers based on his calculation using data from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, NAR and other sources.

NAR doesn’t include New York City in its statistics because the Real Estate Board of New York, the largest foreign investment market in the country, is not an affiliate of the trade group.

Most states had at least one international transaction last year. Arizona, California, Florida and Texas accounted for 58 percent of all U.S. residential transactions completed by international buyers. The housing market of those states are among the hardest hit by the financial crisis.

An NAR survey of roughly 1,000 real estate agents found that foreign-purchasing of U.S. homes surged $16 billion last year. Foreign buyers bought $41 billion worth of U.S. homes over the same period, and immigrants who moved to the U.S. in the past two years purchased another $41 billion. That represents about 7.7 percent of the nation’s $1.07 trillion market of existing homes, NAR said.

Capital Economics gathers data from public sources such as the Federal Reserve.