British real estate developer Barratt Homes has cast eye on Chinese clients.
People close to it said recently that a building in the Canary Wharf, London drew rising attention of it because up to 75 percent of the owners of apartments there were from China. The purchasing power of some Chinese consumers was high and in order to attract them, it established a representative office in the Chinese mainland last year. And currently, it was busy developing clients there through a sales mode integrating both self-owned sales teams and intermediaries.
Bai Xi, general manager and chief representative with the representative office in Beijing, said that Chinese clients would contribute CNY 1 billion to the sales of it this year and over five percent of them would purchase an apartment in projects it launched in London.
As one of the biggest real estate developers in Britain, it has been established for over 50 years and has had more than 9,000 plot of lands as well as 25,000 suites of newly-built apartments locally. It regards middle class, accounting for about 75 percent of the population of Britain, as major targeted clients. And before 2008, it saw business in London be mainly from local market as well as other European nations. However, Chinese investors began entering the market form 2009 and up to 31 percent of the buyers of apartments launched by it in London were from Asia. And among the 31 percent buyers, over 90 percent were from Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. And from last year, it embraced more clients from not only Malaysia and India but also the Chinese mainland.
Bai reiterated that it sold 15,000 suites of apartments last year and among them, 400 ones were bought by clients from the Chinese mainland. And among about 400 suites of apartments sold in London in March this year, 68 ones were bought by those from the Chinese mainland. Among those Chinese investors, 60 percent were those with annual income of about CNY 300,000. Obviously, the aim for them to buy an apartment there was to invest. And in addition to comprehensive strength of a real estate developer, they paid attention to geographic location of an apartment as well as related supplementary facilities when making a decision. The year 2012 was a point and over the coming decade, China would become a major investor in the global real estate market.
It is scheduled to launch 14 projects in London in the first half of this year.
