Melbourne accounts for 18 of the 20 most illegal postal areas for foreign investors in Australia, according to the latest data
Including Point Cook,Werribee, South,Hoppers, Crossing,Tarneit,Glen Waverley,Manor Lakes,Box Hill and Sunbury.
Of the total number of cases of illegal foreign investment investigated since 2015, 877 occurred in Victoria, accounting for 55% of Australia`s total, including a Chinese family buying a luxury home in Canterbury for A $3 million, and a Chinese businessman in 5 million buying a home in Hawthorn.
In a house in East, an Indian bought a house in Rochbank in 5 million.
Many families` grandmothers have been used as middlemen for foreign relatives to buy homes in Melbourne, to act as a cover for overseas investors, to buy homes for them or to hold them on trust.
After being given the responsibility system for regulating residential property compliance, ATO issued more than 1,500 notices of penalties in the handling of these overseas investment violations in the past three years (as of the end of October this year), which will accumulate 316 illegal transactions. The property is forcibly sold, valued at more than 381 million Australian dollars;
Of these, 144 are in Victoria, with a value of A $162 million. In addition, there are 73 in the new state, 64 in Kunzhou. The largest compulsory sale occurred in fiscal year 2017 / 18, with one hundred and thirty three million eight hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine homes being forced to sell.
In 2016-17, foreign buyers approved a total of A $11 billion in residential real estate in Victoria, down sharply from 28 billion in 2015-16, but Melbourne remains the preferred choice for overseas investors in Australia. Especially for Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, India, and Malaysia buyers.
Since 2016, Victoria`s government has increased the stamp duty rate for foreign buyers from 3% to 7%.
Under the current reform of the Foreign Investment Act, foreigners who illegally buy property will not have any benefit in forcing them to sell their homes, and will be fined about 10 percent of the price of the house. But the Australian Inland Revenue Authority (ATO) has so far failed to successfully file any criminal proceedings.
