“We live in a global marketplace. While all real estate is local, not all property buyers are,” said the National Association of Realtors in its recently released 2008 Profile of International Home Buying Activity.

According to MarketWatch, “This new research indicates that international buying activity in the U.S. is widespread. NAR estimates that between 150,000 and 190,000 homes were sold to foreign nationals from May 2007 to May 2008. Recent foreign buyers purchased properties in every state and the District of Columbia. The most popular states where international buyers purchased homes are Florida, California and Texas. Arizona, New York, Washington and Nevada were also popular.”

Some of the report’s other highlights include:

The typical international buyer purchased a single-family vacation home costing $297,400.

Four in 10 paid for their U.S. property with cash, compared with 7 percent for all domestic buyers.

The typical international owner stayed at his or her U.S. property for 2.6 months during the year.

The top six countries of origin for foreign home buyers, in rank order, were Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, China, India and Germany.

This year, Canada replaced Mexico as the country with the largest share of foreign buyers in the U.S. The percentage of Canadian buyers doubled from last year, from 11 percent to 23.5 percent.

Two likely reasons for continued interest abroad in owning a home in U.S. are 1) the declining value of the dollar relative to currencies like the Canadian dollar, British pound, and euro makes real estate relatively more affordable for foreign buyers; and 2) the general decline in home values in the U.S. makes now more than ever seem like a good time to invest in real estate here.

So one might be inclined to say that the U.S.’ pain (declining value of the dollar; declining housing market) is our foreign neighbors’ gain – but let’s remember that anyone who buys real estate now eats up a piece of the standing inventory that’s keeping housing prices down – and each little bit that the inventory goes down brings us one step closer to a housing market recovery.  And that, of course, is a good thing.