Geography and Realty Prices: Evidence from International Transaction-Level Data

In this paper, we examine the role of the international flow of capital in real estate prices by quantifying the relation between investors' geographical locations and the prices they pay for their realty investments. Our data set contains more than 30,000 realty investment transactions in Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. First, we find that foreign investors pay significantly higher prices than domestic investors do even after taking a wide variety of controls into account. Second, this overpricing becomes smaller as the buyers' exposure to realty investments in the host countries becomes higher. Third, in support of these results, the investment returns of foreign investors are systematically lower than that of domestic investors. This negative excess return becomes smaller as the buyers' exposure to the host countries becomes higher. These results indicate that the overpricing of foreign investors occurs when investors are less informed about the local property market and lessens with the accumulation of investment experience.