Coldwell Banker Opens Hong Kong Satellite Office : Real estate: An increasing number of Asian buyers interested in North American properties prompts the move by Mission Viejo-based brokerage.
Real estate brokerage Coldwell Banker has opened a satellite office in Hong Kong to work with what it says is an increasing number of Asian buyers interested in buying North American properties.
Chandler Barton, chairman and chief executive of Coldwell Banker’s residential group, said the Hong Kong office will refer prospective buyers to appropriate Coldwell branches in North America.
“The growth of the Asian home buyers market has been fueled by the relatively weak American dollar and the impending change of government in Hong Kong in 1997,” he said.
The British colony will return to Chinese rule in 1997. The uncertainty of how China will manage Hong Kong’s economy has spurred many residents to immigrate to other countries in recent years, particularly to Canada, the United States and Australia. Coldwell Banker hopes to benefit by making it easier for prospective immigrants to obtain information on buying North American homes.
Coldwell Banker, a Mission Viejo-based subsidiary of Sears, Roebuck & Co., operates a network of 1,900 residential real estate offices and franchises in North America, with more than 40,000 sales associates.
The brokerage firm is also trying to obtain a license to operate in Taiwan, said Gina Bennett, the brokerage’s vice president and director of relocation in Southern California. She said Asians--mostly from Hong Kong and Taiwan--purchase homes here for several reasons. For example, some purchase condominiums for their children attending North American schools; others purchase single-family homes for investments.
“We were interested in doing this for several years but we wanted to get the right people--someone who’s within Coldwell and who’s familiar with both (U.S. and Asian) cultures and languages,” Bennett said Wednesday.
She described the company’s Hong Kong strategy as long-term, “at least until 1997.”
Josephine Cheung, formerly a Coldwell Banker sales associate in Arcadia, was transferred to run the Hong Kong office, which began operating this month. Cheung once served as marketing manager for Revlon’s Hong Kong operations. Lily Liang, a Coldwell Banker sales associate in Palos Verdes, would oversee the Taipei office once the company gets a license to operate in Taiwan.
Setting up a satellite office in Asia could be tough, according to Fred Sands, president of Fred Sands Realtors in Los Angeles.
“We’ve investigated the markets in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan and we found that, as an American firm, it takes many years to develop credibility because people have established relations with companies they know and trust,” he said.
Sands, who plans to expand his business into Orange County in the next two years, said he found that working through large local brokers in those countries is easier and less expensive.
Other brokers such as Prudential Real Estate have established ties with brokerage firms in Hong Kong and other Asian countries.
Home builders, such as Standard Pacific L.P. in Costa Mesa, have seen a healthy jump in Southland home sales to Asian investors and bargain hunters because of the recent dip in prices.
“Due to the slow market conditions that have currently arisen in Orange County and the rest of Southern California, we are seeing more Asian buyers in the marketplace since the first of the year,” said Jari Kartozian, Pacific Standard’s marketing director.
Jim Peters, chairman and president of Newport Beach-based J.M. Peters Co., said that Asians, as a group, have made up a strong percentage of the company’s buyers in recent years.
