Wealthy Chinese are now among the biggest buyers of real estate in Australia, picking up properties ranging from modest suburban homes to waterfront mansions with views across Sydney Harbour.

In one of the biggest purchases this year, a Chinese buyer spent more than 50 million Australian dollars (US$46 million) for Altona, a home in the Sydney suburb of Point Piper that's frequently been rented out to celebrities, including U2 frontman Bono. Weeks earlier, another Point Piper mansion─dubbed the Bang & Olufsen House because it resembles a hi-fi system─sold to a Chinese buyer for Now the influx of Chinese money is starting to skew Australia's real-estate data, which is closely watched by policy makers including the nation's central bankers. Economists at Citigroup Inc., retooling the computer model that churns out the bank's predictions for house prices, found a previously unknown connection: Shifts in levels of Chinese migration were consistently echoed, three years later, by changes in property prices. So strong was the relationship that Citigroup has now worked it into its equations.

'It could be that Chinese immigrants have the income capacity and desire to buy property, more so than other nationalities,' said Paul Brennan, chief economist of Citigroup's Australian operations.

Australia has long courted China's affluent. The first visa in a program that lets foreigners settle in Australia for up to four years in exchange for investing A$5 million went to a Chinese toy maker.

Please contact us in case of Copyright Infringement of the photo sourced from the internet, we will remove it within 24 hours.