Happy new year!

January 31 marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year … a worldwide celebration also known as “Spring Festival” — or the Lunar New Year that includes elaborate festivals, feasts, travel… lasting as long as 15 days.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, we have now entered the Year of the Horse … a year “recognized to symbolize the Chinese people’s ethos – unremitting efforts to improve themselves. It is energetic, bright, warm-hearted, intelligent and able.”

Messages for the new year — as with typical new year celebrations — convey hopes and goals for new beginnings. In the Chinese culture, these are typically expressed with the saying “Ma Shang You…”. Ma literally means “horse” while shang means “above”… when combined, the two characters form an adverb that means “immediately” or “right away”. Literally, however, they can connote “on horseback”. Meanwhile, ma shang you… can also mean to “get (something) immediately”. Therefore a common greeting: Ma Shang You Fang” might also mean “own a house immediately”!  The wordplay has gone viral in China and throughout the world with online images, plushed figures like the one below:

Interestingly, here in the US, Chinese buyers of California real estate are once again expected to surpass all other foreign buyers.

According to the California Association of Realtors, 8% of buyers of California real estate in 2013 were from countries outside the US and 30% of those buyers were Chinese nationals; 36% of foreign buyers paid all cash (exceeding all US all cash buyers).

And, with global stock and emerging markets experiencing volatility and uncertainty, real estate has once again been identified by U.S. millionaires as the top alternative-asset class to own this year, according to Morgan Stanley. (MS). Full article here.

2013 Real Estate was a story in part of investors boosting residential real estate values… will this story be retold? If this article is foretelling, we may see a repeat…