The builder had sold 130 homes the first day’: Foreign buyers may add to housing woes, prices

In June, when real estate agent Nitin Gupta took two clients to see a new housing  development in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a sales representative for the builder told him all the units were gone.

The builder had planned to sell 100 homes to investors, out of roughly 1,500 he was planning to build. Investors had come to the site the day before, the rep told Gupta, and another agent had pitched the homes to a group of buyers in China over Zoom.

“He said, ‘The people were saying, I want one, I want two, I want three. Boom, boom, boom,” Gupta recalls. “The agent sold about 50 to 60 homes and the builder had sold 130 homes the first day.”

While the global COVID-19 pandemic has squashed sales of U.S. homes to foreign buyers over the last year, local buyers should be prepared for a rebound in competition from other countries in the next 12 months, economists say.