Los Angeles drawing real estate investors from Korea after lifting of overseas cap

"LOS ANGELES: Choung Yang Suk just bought a condominium in the city's Koreatown district — far from her home in South Korea — and plans to retire there in a few years to be near her two grown children.
Choung is among a growing number of Koreans scooping up real estate in the United States and elsewhere after the overseas investment cap in their country was lifted.
Koreans are expected to invest nearly $2 billion in U.S. residential property in 2006, up from $1.27 billion in 2005, when such investments were mostly limited to large Korean corporations, said Brian Shaffer of the International Real Estate Trade Organization.
Koreans could spend at least $4 billion worldwide on overseas homes in 2007 as a result of the changes made in May that allow an individual to make as much as $1 million in foreign investments, analysts said.
Many of the purchases are being prompted by the strength of the Korean won against foreign currencies and by the economic and political stability offered in some other nations, analysts said.
Much of the money will likely be directed to U.S. cities with large Korean populations, including San Francisco, New York and Atlanta, to take advantage of lower home prices stemming from the weakening U.S. housing market.
Observers said the lion's share of the money will be invested in Los Angeles, which has one of the world's largest Korean populations outside the Asian nation.
"It could very well release a tidal wave of investment into Southern California, particularly Koreatown" said Peter Morrison, a demographer with the Rand Corp. research organization, who has studied home-buying patterns among immigrant groups." read more

By Jacob Adelman The Associated Press