Interview: Australia still safe investment place for real estate developers: expert

The Australian property market remains a solid international investment place despite the federal government's tightening of foreign investment regulations, an international expert has said.

Tom Southern from the world's largest real estate firm CBRE told Xinhua in an interview on Thursday that he believed Australia, the country he mainly operates in, is one of the world's most dynamic markets for his American-based company.

He said his statements were based on the healthy Australian real estate market.

Southern's company operates in both residential and commercial fields which have different governing laws in Australia.

"This discussion is about commercial and residential because they are two different things," he said.

"They can connect but they are two different things. Probably just saying that over the years, the last 10 or 15 years or maybe even longer, the interest from many off-shore countries and groups in Australia has grown."

But there is an increased interest from China, Southern told Xinhua.

"Now the Chinese in the past five years have dramatically changed the amount of property that they're buying here," he said.

"And if you took 2015 just in the past four months, China would be the second largest nationality buying commercial and residential properties. The largest is still Singapore, and the third largest would be America which would actually surprise a lot of people."

"Over a long period of time Australia is very wealthy," Southern said. "It is transparent, the government is very stable, the legal system is based on the English system."

"Getting information about markets is very easy. So I think it' s a country that is very conducive to investment," Southern said.

Australia's property market has spiraled in the past 15 years, and Southern said Chinese developers had proven skills to manage such growth in conjunction with local laws. Endi