In a growing trend, buyers from other countries purchased more than $56 billion of U.S. Homes during the last year, according to a new report issued by the National Association of Realtors.
That figure, while impressive, appears even more significant when compared with the trend line of 2023-2024 when it was 33% smaller.
“International interest in buying U.S. real estate increased following the global economic recovery from several years of pandemic-related disruptions,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the NAR, remarked in a statement.
The NAR document, International Transactions in U.S. Residential Real Estate, shows that foreign homebuyers purchased 78,100 properties from April of 2024 to March of this year. The median price for those properties worked out to a record high of $494,400, up from the previous year’s $475,000.
Equally impressive, exactly 47% of those homebuyers made all-cash purchases, compared with 28% of all buyers.
The largest country of origin for the foreign homebuyers was China, followed by Canada at 14%, and Mexico at 8%. Those three countries have played a dominant role in the international market for U.S. residential real estate for more than a decade.
The number of purchasers from India made up 6% of the market, down from 10% the year before. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, comprised 4% of the market in keeping with trends dating to 2018. But during the immediate years of the Great Recession, the U.K represented 12% of the market.
Homeowners from Canada, too, have seen a decline, from an all-time high of 24% in 2012 to a range of 10% to 14% in the last three years.
Hottest U.S. states for foreign purchases: Florida, representing 21% of all buyers, followed by California at 15%, Texas at 10%, New York at 7%, and Arizona at 5%.
Florida has held the number one spot for well over a decade, while California and Texas have battled for second place. Arizona’s 5% is typical of its ranking for most of the last decade. However, the Grand Canyon State represented 11% of foreign purchases in 2010.
Yun noted that while foreign buyers were more likely to purchase upper end properties, they were also, overall, drawn to investing in American real estate due to “our country’s strong protection of private property rights.”
July 17, 2025
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
