Foreign Property Owners Forced To Sell $380M In Real Estate
Foreigners who acquired Australian property illegally have been compelled to sell it back.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said between 2015 and the latter part of this year, 316 properties owned by foreigners were forced to sell, after an investigation by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
Now that efforts to enforce the laws have been ramped up, ATO has issued more than 1,500 penalty notices to people who have either not obtained a Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) approval, or who failed to honor conditions of applications that were already approved.
The owners of said properties were from all over: China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Likely the largest number were Chinese.
131 properties worth $133.9 million were sold in one year from the end of 2017 through early 2018.
In the year earlier, 2016-2017, 96 properties were sold for $96.8 million. And the year prior to that, 54 properties for $61.5 million.
Here is a chart listing the properties by state.
40% of the properties involved were in Victoria. 144 forced sales were recorded there, followed by 73 in Queensland.
More information: https://www.finder.com.au/investing-in-property-as-a-non-resident
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Source: https://www.propertynerd.com.au/
