The predictions are in, and while we’ll see modest improvement, the 2024 real estate market is likely to remain subdued across the U.S. due to low inventory and relatively high interest rates.
But “subdued” does not mean nonexistent and the most recent forecasts are predicting sales of existing homes will rise to 4.3 million by year’s end, up from a dismal 3.8 million in 2023, but still below the 5 million average of recent years.
One way to address slower sales is to identify areas of the market that you may have neglected in the past where you can build some expertise, such as in manufactured housing closings or small commercial transactions.
One prime opportunity immediately available is handling transactions for foreign or immigrant buyers and sellers who speak primarily in their own language.
Before you pass on this idea, communicating with foreign sellers is easy with Alanna, which can communicate with your foreign and immigrant buyers and sellers in 54 different languages. And here is why this is an important tool to put in your tool belt.
Immigrants like owning property
Immigrants in general are more likely to spend a significant portion of their income to obtain property. We talk about homeownership as the American dream, and immigrants often see potential in the stability that homeownership can offer them when they come here, which they do in huge numbers.
From 2000 to 2020 – a span of two decades – more than 21 million legal immigrants arrived in the U.S. and became embedded in our culture and our workforce.
Of those 21M, nearly 9M came from the Americas, including 3.2M from Mexico, 2.5M from the Caribbean countries, 1.6M from South America and 1M from Central America, and another million from Canada and other locations. During that same time period, 7.5M arrived from Asia, 2.5M from Europe and 1.8M from Africa.
According to Lending Tree stats, across the nation’s 50 largest metros, an average of 55.20% of the population born outside the U.S. live in owner-occupied housing units.
These numbers are most significant in major metropolitan areas where the largest contingent of immigrants reside. For instance, San Jose, Miami and Los Angeles have the largest immigrant populations with more than 37% of their residents being foreign born. In addition, across the 50 largest metros, nearly 15% of owner-occupied homes belong to immigrants.
Having the language expertise to work with immigrants can be a huge plus for your agency not only for immigrants but for foreign buyers and sellers as well.
Foreign investment in the U.S.
In addition to immigrants, the U.S. real estate market experiences a huge influx of foreign investment each year. According to the National Association of Realtors, foreign buyers purchased $53.3 billion worth of U.S. existing homes from April 2022 through March 2023.
On average, foreign buyers alone purchase nearly 100,000 properties per year in the U.S., although as with all market verticals, this has been subdued this past year as interest rates rose.
If you want to expand your expertise to include foreign-speaking buyers and sellers, Alanna is the perfect addition to your technology repertoire. Alanna’s translation ability allows your employees to type a message in English and it gets relayed to your customer in whatever primary language they speak. Communicating with a non-native speaker has never been easier, and it’s just one of the many benefits Alanna brings to the table for title companies.
Contact us today to learn about Alanna’s translation services that will help you close transactions with foreign-speaking buyers with confidence.