Foreign investors continue to secure billions of dollars in approvals to invest in Australia’s housing market despite restrictions on overseas purchases of established homes, with Chinese investors maintaining their position as the country’s largest source of approved foreign residential property investment.
The latest Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) figures show $4.7 billion in residential investment proposals were approved during 2025–26, including $900 million from China across 785 approvals.
Chinese investors accounted for more approved investment than the next two largest source countries combined, with Taiwan recording $500 million and Vietnam $300 million, followed by Indonesia and India at $200 million each.
Although China remains the largest source of foreign residential investment by both value and number of approvals, its approved investment has fallen from $2.6 billion in 2023–24 to $1.4 billion in 2024–25 and $900 million in the latest financial year.
Across all countries, approved foreign residential investment declined from $6.6 billion in 2023–24 to $4.9 billion in 2024–25 and $4.7 billion in 2025–26, while the number of approvals fell from 5,581 to 2,979 over the two-year period.
The latest quarterly report, also recorded 656 approved residential investment proposals worth $900 million between April and June 2026.
The figures come as the Federal Government continues to restrict foreign purchases of established Australian homes, with foreign investors generally prohibited from purchasing existing dwellings unless an exception applies.
Juwai IQI co-founder and group managing director Daniel Ho told realestate.com.au that Chinese interest in Australian property remained strong, but buyers were increasingly changing when and how they entered the market.
“Buyers from China still love Australia. They value its universities, its lifestyle, and its stability,” Mr Ho said.
“What has changed is not their interest in Australia but the way they buy. Most now wait until they hold permanent residency, which removes the FIRB process, the foreign buyer fees, and the FIRB application fees.”
Mr Ho said the figures did not capture purchases by Australian permanent residents or citizens, meaning the decline in approvals did not necessarily reflect the broader level of demand from overseas-born buyers.
He also highlighted the importance of foreign buyers to new housing developments, particularly where international purchasers help developers achieve the presales required to proceed with construction.
“These buyers help developers reach their presale targets and get projects built,” he said.
While the latest figures provide an indication of how foreign investment is changing, ACproperty.com.au founder Esther Yong believes the industry may be overlooking another significant opportunity: the Chinese buyers of previous years who are now Australian property owners and potential future vendors.
Esther, whose Australian Chinese property portal has connected local agents with Chinese buyers, argues that the industry has become so accustomed to thinking about Chinese clients as purchasers that it has paid comparatively little attention to what happens when those owners eventually decide to sell.
“The most valuable Chinese-speaking client in your patch right now may not be in your patch at all. They are in Shanghai, or Shenzhen, or Hong Kong — they own a property a few streets from your office, and they are thinking about selling it,” she says.
Her argument is that the industry’s international marketing strategies have largely been built around attracting incoming buyers, with agents investing in translated brochures, Chinese-language property portals and WeChat campaigns to reach purchasers during the strong investment years between 2014 and 2018.
But those earlier purchases have also created an existing pool of overseas owners, some of whom may eventually need an appraisal, a marketing campaign and an agent to handle a sale from thousands of kilometres away.
Esther believes this potential vendor market deserves greater attention, particularly in suburbs with a history of Chinese investment, where established owners may be considering their longer-term property plans.
The restrictions on foreign purchases of established homes add another consideration, because an overseas owner who sells may not be eligible to purchase another established dwelling while the prohibition remains in place.
That does not mean these owners are necessarily preparing to sell, and the FIRB figures do not demonstrate an increase in sales by Chinese owners. However, Esther believes the industry should be positioning itself to compete for those listings whenever the owners decide to enter the market.
One of the biggest misconceptions, she argues, is that Chinese-speaking vendors automatically prefer to list with Chinese-speaking agents.
While language and cultural familiarity can influence the decision, Esther believes overseas owners ultimately want the same things as Australian vendors: an agent who understands the local market, can demonstrate strong sales results and has the skills to achieve the best possible price.
She points to discussions on Chinese-language community forums where owners compare commission rates, recent local sales and different selling methods, including auctions and private treaty campaigns.
The issue, she argues, is not necessarily that these owners are choosing a Chinese-speaking agency over another local business, but that the Chinese-speaking agency may be the only one they can easily find and assess from overseas.
An owner living in Shanghai may never encounter the signboards, open homes, local sponsorships or community advertising that help Australian vendors become familiar with agents operating in their suburb.
Instead, their search may begin on WeChat, a Chinese-language property portal or a digital platform that many Australian agencies have never considered part of their marketing strategy.
As a result, Esther believes capable agents can miss the opportunity to compete for a listing before the vendor has even made contact.
She draws a comparison with the rise of Australian property portals, when agencies that failed to establish an online presence became increasingly difficult for prospective clients to discover, regardless of their local reputation.
For agents seeking to improve their visibility among overseas owners, Esther argues that the first step is to establish a presence on the platforms those vendors already use, rather than expecting them to discover an Australian agency through English-language marketing.
WeChat is particularly important because it operates as more than a messaging service, with its own search functions, business accounts and content ecosystem.
She also identifies Xiaohongshu, commonly known as Rednote, as another channel worth considering, particularly for younger Chinese consumers who use the platform to search for information as well as browse photographs and videos.
For agencies already producing property videos, suburb profiles and sales updates, this could involve adapting existing material with Chinese captions rather than developing an entirely separate marketing campaign.
However, she believes the next significant change in how overseas vendors find agents could come from AI.
Chinese consumers are increasingly using AI assistants such as DeepSeek, Doubao and Tencent’s Yuanbao to research businesses and services, creating another potential discovery channel for Australian agencies.
Esther suggests agents consider what information those tools might find if an overseas owner searched for help selling an Australian property.
A vendor might want to know whether an agency can manage a sale remotely, how it handles inspections when a property is tenanted, or how the owner will receive campaign updates while living overseas.
Providing clear answers to those questions on an agency website could make it easier for potential vendors to assess the business, although there is no guarantee that any particular AI platform will recommend or cite an agency.
For Esther, the objective is not necessarily to establish a large international marketing operation or employ a bilingual sales team, but to remove some of the barriers that prevent overseas owners from discovering capable local agents.
She believes even relatively modest changes to an agency’s digital presence could make a difference, particularly while competition for visibility on Chinese-language platforms remains less established than on Australia’s major property portals.
The opportunity is especially relevant for agents operating in suburbs with a history of overseas investment, where existing property owners may have moved abroad but retained their Australian assets.
While FIRB figures show that approved foreign residential investment has declined over the past two years, they also confirm that international buyers continue to participate in Australia’s housing market, particularly through approved investment in new housing.
For Esther, the next step is for agents to recognise that an international buyer may eventually become an international vendor, and that the ability to reach those owners could become an increasingly important part of winning future listings.
“The next overseas Chinese vendor in your patch won’t choose between you and the agency down the road. Unless something changes, they’ll never see you side by side. They don’t need you to speak their language. They just need to be able to find you in theirs.”