Foreign Investors Betting on Housing Market Amid Coronavirus Spread

With the coronavirus causing such market volatility, investors are turning to the housing market for a steady place to safeguard their capital. Though other industries are getting whiplash from the sudden plunge in the stock market, the housing industry traditionally holds firm through market chaos. Foreign interest in single-family rental homes on Roofstock, a rental property sales website, is going through the roof: Traffic is up 500 percent from Asia, 450 percent from Germany, 250 percent from Australia, and 100 percent from the UK in just the last few weeks. But how are these foreign investors sealing the deal on properties from thousands of miles away in a time where no one wants to get on a plane? They do not call it the World Wide Web for nothing: Investors are able to scoop up these properties from the comfort of their own laptop. 

Investors are looking for the calm in the coronavirus storm, and U.S. residential real estate appears to be it, specifically single-family rental homes.

These investors are not, however, coming to the U.S. to tour the homes themselves. They’re buying them online. 

Roofstock, a 5-year-old California-based fintech company, lists single-family rental homes for sale on its website, most with tenants already in place. It also offers management services, so the investor never has to visit the property. In the last few weeks it has seen traffic from investors in Asia on its site jump 500%. CEO Gary Beasley said it is a direct result of the coronavirus. 

“I think it may be people looking to invest capital into what may be perceived as more stable areas that don’t have as much of an effect, at least not yet, from the virus,” said Beasley. “I think people look at hard assets, things like real estate, which are uncorrelated generally to the stock market, and specifically U.S. housing, that tends to perform quite well on a relative basis during times of market volatility.”

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