Investing and Global Finance News

Monthly Archives: November 2015

Luxury Homes in US Purchased through IM Apps by Chinese Nationals

WeChat logo by Anarchy-Ren
WeChat logo by Anarchy-Ren

Chinese nationals are the largest group of non-American buyers of US real estate. With an eye to diversifying their portfolios and keeping their money safe, Chinese investors are willing to pay more than all other nationalities.

Enter the voice messaging app known as WeChat, introduced in 2011 by the Chinese Internet gaming giant Tencent. WeChat, over the years has expanded its functions and now offers just about every kind of app. WeChat offers movies, cab-calling, photo sharing, retail purchasing, gaming, and even personal loans can be secured on WeChat. Lately WeChat has also become a kind of real estate sales platform in which Chinese buyers are connecting with real estate agents in the US.

Now combine that with the amazing fact that there are 650 million users on WeChat, a large proportion of them Chinese, a user base which is twice that of the entire US population.

“I would pay $100 a month to use WeChat,” said Jing Wang, a 36-year-old real estate agent for Lin Pan Realty Group in New York. “It would be much harder to be introduced and reach Chinese clients because many of the social websites, like Facebook, are blocked in China — that’s a lot of time and money.”

“WeChat has become essential to consumers’ daily lives,” Xiaofeng Wang, an analysts at Forrester Research in Beijing wrote. “Marketers the world over must take account of WeChat, which has become so ubiquitous that it has changed Chinese consumers’ mobile behaviors in profound ways.”

Cuban Trade Fair Swamped with US Products

Beginning on Monday, November 2 Cuba will be hosting its annual International Trade Fair. This year’s Fair is the first since the US and Cuba decided to thaw the fifty-year freeze on diplomatic relations between them, and this fact is clear from the enormous number of US products on display. Immediately after the communist island… Continue Reading