New York City
A woman passes by the building that formerly was the location of Bowlmor Lanes in New York July 14, 2014. As wealthy prospective buyers search for dwindling space to transform into high-end retail and residential, city historians and sentimentalists fear that the shops and restaurants from some of Manhattan's most notable eras have been marked for extinction. Picture taken July 14, 2014. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS SOCIETY REAL ESTATE)
A woman passes by the building that formerly was the location of Bowlmor Lanes in New York July 14, 2014. As wealthy prospective buyers search for dwindling space to transform into high-end retail and residential, city historians and sentimentalists fear that the shops and restaurants from some of Manhattan's most notable eras have been marked for extinction. Picture taken July 14, 2014. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS SOCIETY REAL ESTATE)

A U.S. portfolio manager claimed New York's property bubble could pop due to a rise in demand, a great deal of foreign transactions (led by the Chinese), and a loophole in the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA), which imposes tax obligations on foreign investors, according to a commentary published on CNBC.

Todd Schoenberger, president of J. Streicher Asset Management LLC and portfolio manager of the LandColt Onshore and Offshore Funds, said property demand in New York has risen incredibly in 2014, and with low inventories, prices are "pushed higher and higher," which could result to the bursting of the state's real estate bubble.

Citing a report from Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Schoenberger said that properties last for only 96 days on the market, down by 46 per cent from 2013. Developers are not meeting the demand even if new constructions have risen by 18 per cent, he added.

He also said that the influx of foreign buyers, specifically wealthy Chinese, is causing home prices in New York to increase. The National Association of Realtors' 2014 Profile of International Home Buying Activity stated that Chinese buyers accounted for $22 billion of the $92.2 billion worth of real estate deals in the country, which mostly took place in New York. Several reports have in fact noted that Chinese buyers have overtaken Russian oligarchs in top foreign buyers of upscale properties in New York, particularly Manhattan.

Schoenberger said that Chinese buyers have also gone on a shopping frenzy in London and Sydney, which led to a property price hike by as much as 20 per cent and 15.4 per cent, respectively, in 2013 in both cities.

To prevent a possible bubble, London and Sydney imposed mortgage caps and taxes as high as 15 per cent on foreign real estate buyers. A similar system - the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA) = has been enforced by the United States government on foreign property investors in the country, taxing them an additional 10 percent of every real estate deal.

But FIRPTA is flawed, he argued, as foreign parties in a total return swap contract earning from a U.S. real estate index are not covered by the tax act. And "closing the loophole" will cause the property bubble in New York to burst, he explained.

An April analysis on Yahoo! Finance stated that New York City, as well as San Francisco, is far from bubble territory even if demand is up and supply gets tighter.

"Believe it or not, there is enough demand in those markets from people who can afford to pay those sky-high prices. Expensive does not always indicate a bubble," the report stated, according to comments made by Trulia's chief economist Jed Kolko.

Investing in real estate could get trickier with market trends changing everyday and with mixed results and commentaries coming from industry experts. Holding out could buy property investors some time to think and allow them to do their homework effectively.

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Over 350,000 agents have signed up for an account on Nestbuilder.com, while 24,000 videos are published every day on Nestbuilder Agent and RealBiz Media's Microvideo App platform, the company said in a statement.

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