Real Estate News:
Zillow To Market Southland Homes Directly To Chinese Market!

Zillow Announces Partnership & Will Provide SoCal Listings Through Chinese Online Portal 

We've written in these pages recently about the current influx of Southern California real estate buyers that are Chinese nationals. There is a great deal of money being invested in California real estate that is coming from China these days. In fact, wealthy Chinese buyers are driving the market in certain areas. The San Gabriel Valley is certainly one of the most prominent of those.

As if to offer verification of these contentions, the Seattle-based real estate website company, Zillow, Inc., has just announced that it will partner with Beijing-based Leju, an affiliate of E-House China Holdings, Ltd. Together the two companies will construct a co-branded website to offer Zillow's US online listing data to Chinese buyers in China. Here's an article from Andrew Khouri with all the details as it appeared in the Los Angeles Times:

Zillow To Partner With Beijing Firm To Market U.S. Homes Abroad - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/ Wed, 4 Apr 2014

Many see U.S. real estate as a cheaper and more stable investment as fears over a Chinese property bubble grow amid other political and economic concerns. ... Chinese buyers bought 12% of all U.S. homes purchased by foreign citizens last year, up from 5% in 2007, according to the National Assn. of Realtors. More than half their home purchases were in California. And more than two-thirds of them paid cash...

Read More Here: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-zillow-chinese-20140402,0,4820992.story#axzz2xwqk5gDT ===================================

UPDATE: Read Zillow's Own Announcement To Real Estate Pro's

Zillow to Power U.S. Real Estate Listings For Leju, China’s Second Largest Real Estate Website - Zillow For Pro's Blog

http://www.zillow.com/blog/pro/ 2 Apr 2014

Beginning in early summer 2014, Leju visitors who search for U.S. properties will be brought to a Zillow-Leju co-branded website whereby they will have access to Zillow’s robust home search experience, rich data on homes, millions of for-sale listings, and unique pre-market inventory ... The co-branded site will be translated into Chinese....

Read More Here: http://www.zillow.com/blog/pro/zillow-leju-cobranded-website-111002/ ===================================

Savvy Brokers and Agents Can Capitalize

With the coming of this new and very direct informational link with the huge potential market of Chinese buyers, savvy real estate brokers and agents can make good use of this new opportunity. With so much of the California market being driven by this type of investor, those real estate practioners who have their listings displayed on Zillow will have a huge new market ... that of the Chinese investor ... directly viewing the properties they have available.