Foreign real estate investment boom and bust in Sydney, Australia - Chinese property developers after the bust

Abstract

This thesis examines Chinese property developers’ responses to the bust in foreign real estate investment in Sydney within the context of a slowing of the domestic real estate market from 2017. In the 2010s, Australia experienced a foreign real estate investment boom and bust, highlighted by a significant boom and bust in residential real estate investment by both individual purchasers and commercial entities. China was the largest source of foreign investment in the Australian real estate market (2012-2017). The withdrawal of individual foreign real estate investors occurred along with a dramatic downturn in domestic real estate activity, reflected by a decrease of transaction volumes, a slight decrease in housing prices in some suburbs, and the slowing of construction activity in the housing market in Sydney. Unlike individual Chinese investors who largely exited the Australian real estate market from 2017, some Chinese property developers appeared committed to the domestic Australian market.

Empirically, this study examines Chinese property developers’ practices in the bust period in Sydney. It is framed within a wider debate about foreign real estate investment in Australia in the 21st century and a complex set of China–Australia geopolitical relations. Conceptually, it presents a number of theoretical innovations that are built around the idea of capital switching. Yet, instead of emphasising capital switching between different circuits of capital accumulation, this analysis shifts to the internal dynamics of the real estate sector itself but expands the spatial scale of analysis into the transnational context. The analysis demonstrates the three phases of capital switching between Australia to China in the 2010s and points out the two initiative switchings of Chinese property developers in the bust, which are ‘customer switching and product switching’.