Overseas real estate boom lures Asian-American buyers

The San Jose Mercury reports:

They rushed through the glass doors of the sleek Zhubang 2000 high-rise and pointed excitedly at a lobby directory. The Bay Area visitors snapped photos of a wall of metal plates engraved with tenants' names and office numbers.

``That's mine!'' Jen Corsa shouted, pointing to a Japanese semiconductor company. Giddy as a teenager on a shopping spree, the middle-aged Taiwanese-American exclaimed to no one in particular: ``This is so exciting!''

Corsa doesn't own stock in the Japanese firm. But before the end of the day, the Benicia resident would become its landlord and an investor in the 23-story building at the edge of Beijing's central business district. Her excitement was shared by 18 other Bay Area Chinese-American investors who came to investigate Zhubang's investment potential.

Investments by Asian-Americans are helping fuel sizzling real estate markets thousands of miles away. Stymied by nosebleed California property prices, many immigrants turn to their homelands for cheaper investments -- and a chance to ride the Asian boom. Foreign developers are accelerating that trend by marketing directly to eager buyers through California mortgage brokers.

Hot real estate markets are world wide.