My post on the Credit Suisse report into Chinese foreign investment triggered a dreadful spruik at the Fairfax dailies yesterday but the AFR has picked the story more usefully today. The reliable Robert Harley writes:
Late last year the internet carried the story of a Melbourne auction conducted in Mandarin. Impossible to confirm, and strictly illegal, it touched many already struggling to buy a home.
FIRB chairman, investment banker Brian Wilson, visited China last May to “further the board’s engagement with officials and potential investors”.
His board could also further its engagement with Australians. (He claims it is, in his report.)
Even the experts find the FIRB annual report, released last week for 2012-13, tardy, lacking in meaningful detail and hard to reconcile with their own experience. In particular they tell nothing about the flow of credit. Local citizens could be buying with money from that $US7 trillion ($7.8 trillion) pool of Chinese shadow banks.
…Tony Crabb, the research director of real estate group Savills, says the FIRB’s numbers on approvals to buy commercial property are irreconcilable with Savills numbers on the actual investment in 2012-13.
Deep End Services’ Stanley says…“This is one area where Australian property is not as transparent as it needs to be.”
Too right.
