Foreign buyers spent $45.3 billion on U.S. existing homes between April 2025 and March 2026, and buyers connected to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan paid the highest average price of any group by a wide margin, close to $1 million per purchase. The figures come from the National Association of Realtors’ 2026 International Transactions in U.S. Residential Real Estate report, published July 29 and covered in detail by HousingWire, and they tell a story of a foreign buyer pool that’s shrinking in size but still willing to spend big on specific properties in specific states.
The Headline Numbers Are Down, Not Up
Dollar volume from international buyers fell 19.1% year over year, and the number of properties purchased dropped 14% to 67,100 homes. NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun tied the pullback to broader travel patterns, saying in the association’s own release that “the decline in foreign home buyer activity mirrors the decline in international visitors and tourists to the United States.” Even with the drop, foreign buyers spent more per transaction than the typical American buyer: the median foreign purchase price was $465,000, compared with $413,600 for all U.S. existing-home buyers.
Chinese Buyers Spent the Most, Bought the Fewest Homes
Buyers from China accounted for just 11% of foreign-buyer transaction volume by unit count, fewer purchases than buyers from Canada or Mexico, but they spent $7.6 billion total, the largest dollar share of any origin country. Yun explained the gap directly: “Chinese buyers spent the most dollars because they bought higher-priced homes, specifically in California.” Divide that $7.6 billion across roughly 7,400 homes and the average lands close to $1 million per purchase, well above what any other major buyer group paid on average.
Canada and Mexico Bought the Most Homes, Not the Most Dollars
By volume, neighboring countries dominate. Canadian buyers purchased 10,700 U.S. homes worth $5.2 billion, a 16% share, while Mexican buyers bought 9,400 homes worth $5.0 billion, a 14% share. Yun noted that “foreign buyers from Canada and Mexico — countries that border the U.S. — bought the most housing units,” a pattern that has held for years and reflects proximity, cross-border family ties, and vacation-home buying rather than investment-driven purchases.
Florida and California Absorb Nearly Two in Five Foreign Buyers
Florida drew 20% of all foreign buyers, the single largest state share, followed by California at 19% and Texas at 12%. New Jersey and Georgia rounded out the top five at 4% each. That concentration means the national numbers are really a story about a handful of coastal and Sun Belt markets absorbing the overwhelming majority of international buying activity, while most of the country sees almost none of it.
Nearly Half Paid Cash
Financing habits set foreign buyers apart from the domestic market just as sharply as pricing does. Forty-eight percent of foreign buyers paid entirely in cash, compared with 28% of all existing-home buyers nationally. That gap matters in competitive markets, where a cash offer can beat a financed one even at a lower price, since it removes appraisal and lending contingencies that slow down or sink a deal.
Who Foreign Buyers Actually Are
The report splits buyers by residency status, and the split is close to even: 56% were recent immigrants or people living in the U.S. on visas, accounting for 37,600 homes and $21.8 billion in spending, while 44% lived abroad at the time of purchase, accounting for 29,500 homes and $23.5 billion. That distinction complicates the popular image of the “foreign buyer” as someone purchasing sight-unseen from overseas. More than half of the transactions in this report were made by people already living in the country.
What It Means for the Broader Market
Foreign purchases still represent a small slice of the overall housing market (about 1.7% of existing-home sales volume), so this isn’t a story about international buyers driving national price trends. But in the specific ZIP codes where they concentrate, particularly parts of Florida and California, a buyer pool willing to pay above the median price and skip financing entirely can still shape how competitive a local market feels, even as the overall number of international transactions continues to shrink. For a domestic buyer competing in one of those markets, the practical takeaway isn’t to expect a wave of overseas money statewide, but to recognize that a cash-heavy, higher-budget bidder is a real possibility in specific coastal and Sun Belt ZIP codes, even in a year when the broader foreign-buyer trend line is pointing down.
