CENTER OF
ATTRACTION
International buyers’ captivation
with Orlando drove foreign
transactions up 20 percent in 2017
The charms of our City Beautiful continue
to allure homebuyers from around
the globe. In fact, Orlando in 2017
repeated as Florida’s second most desired
destination of foreign homebuyers, and it captured
11 percent of the state’s market share.
Only the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach
area, which drew a whopping 53 percent of
all Florida international transactions, topped
Orlando.
“International homebuyers account for a
significant segment of Orlando’s real estate
industry,” says ORRA President Lou Nimkoff ,
Brio Real Estate Services LLC. "There were
approximately 61,300 Florida homes sold
to foreign nationals during the 2017 study’s
12-month period. Orlando’s market share of
those sales calculates to nearly 6,750 closings,
which is about a 20 percent increase over the
estimated 5,600 international transactions in
2016.”
International buyers also contribute significantly
to Orlando’s dollar volume statistic.
Foreign buyer purchases tend to involve
higher priced homes and accounted for 21
percent of Florida’s total residential dollar
volume during the study period. That 21
percent equates to $1.9 billion when applied
to Orlando’s $8.8 billion worth of home sales
in 2017*.
There were five primary countries of origin
for Florida’s international homebuyers in
2017: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the United
Kingdom, and Venezuela. Of those five countries,
Orlando ranks as the #2 collective purchase
location of choice for all but Canada. (In
2016, Orlando drew 29 percent of all buyers
from United Kingdom and that country’s #1
popularity ranking.)
BUYER
DEMOGRAPHICS
Orlando area international
buyers in 2017
were mainly Latin American
and Caribbean (37
percent), European (22
percent), and Asian (15
percent), but exactly who
found Orlando attractive?
By a large margin it
was buyers from Brazil
and Canada that flocked
to Orlando. Those from
Brazil were involved in
13 percent of Orlando’s
international transactions,
while Canadian
nationals participated in
12. The United Kingdom
and Venezuela each
supplied 10 percent of
Orlando’s international
buyers in 2017.
FEATURE
FOREIGN FACTOIDS -
2017
17% of Florida
REALTORS®
had a domestic client
seeking to purchase a
property abroad
44% of Florida
REALTORS®
worked with a foreign
client
72%of referrals
or leads
came from business
contacts, personal
contacts, or previous
clients
Florida International % Who Purchased
Buyer Origin a Home in Orlando
Brazil 21%
United Kingdom 18%
Venezuela 17%
Canada 6%
Argentina 4%
18 Orlando REALTOR® March / April 2018