US hot property for Indian buyers

An extra home in the suburbs of Delhi or Bangalore was never enough for them. Flush with cash and keen to diversify their portfolio, Indians are busy snapping up property in the US. Yashwant Raj reports. House that

An extra home in the suburbs of Delhi or Bangalore was never enough for them. Flush with cash and keen to diversify their portfolio, Indians are busy snapping up property in the US.

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And they are not Indian-Americans, but Indians from Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, who are picking up single-family homes and condos for vacation or just investment.

Indians are among the top five international buyers of residential properties in the US, according to the latest report of the National Association of Realtors released Monday.

The US residential real estate business was worth $928.2 billion in the year ending March 2012, of which $82.5 billion - 4.8 % - came from international buyers. Indians accounted for 6% of this $82.5 billion.

They are buying mostly in Arizona, Nevada (Las Vegas), Florida and California. And most of these transactions, said an Indian-American realtor, were in cash. All of it, up front.