KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 26): Chinese investors rattled by the country's shaky financial situation have raced to offload foreign properties as their household wealth dwindles.

The London-based Daily Express in a report on Monday (Sept 25) said hundreds of middle-class families who bought investment properties before the Covid pandemic in 2020 have mounted a frantic search for potential buyers following China's bumpy reopening earlier this year.

Citing Guangdong-based property agent Stephen Yao as telling the South China Morning Post, the daily said affluent Chinese nationals have struggled to afford payments on homes that once would have given them attractive returns.

Yao, who represents more than 200 families, said the mass selloffs were indicative of the wide-ranging effects on people's incomes.

He said: "A number of them can no longer afford the final payment for their property investment and desperately need cash to solve their domestic financial problems, such as business failures, lay-offs and mortgage loan defaults.

“Some no longer have the extra funds to continue holding these overseas properties.”

The report added that foreign investment from Chinese residents in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and beyond have also left properties built by domestic companies in peril.

After seeing the investing trend in Southeast Asia, Chinese developers jumped at the opportunity to build properties in the area made to entice the middle classes readily recouping their money in foreign homes.

But these properties now lie vacant as the economy leaves people unable to invest, with the combined floor area of unsold homes currently at an estimated seven billion square feet, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.