We traditional think of housing and construction as “nontradeable” sectors but it is, of course, perfectly possible for a foreign to buy a house in the United States. Jed Kolko at Trulia takes a look at which markets attract the most interest from foreigners and finds that it’s Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hawaii, and Las Vegas where foreigners make up a large share of searches. He also finds, however, that with asking prices back on the rise foreigners’ level of interest in the US housing market is on the decline.
Another interesting finding here is that Canadians—but not residents of any other country—are fairly interested in Phoenix real estate, perhaps because there’s enough cultural and media integration between Canada for the US for Canadians to think of Arizona as a retirement destination.
