While there has been substantial attention in recent years to non-resident foreigners who buy U.S. real estate (see our previous research here, here and here, for instance), each year non-resident foreigners also sell U.S. real estate. Since these sales must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), data are much more readily available than data on the home purchases.

In 2015, non-resident foreigners sold $10.5 billion of U.S. real estate, according to data published last week by the IRS, up from $8.4 billion in 2014 and from $7.5 billion in 2013.[1]

Canadians were the largest group of non-residents who sold U.S. real estate in 2015, accounting for 34 percent of the 26,137 non-resident foreigners who sold real estate in the United States. They were followed by Germans (11 percent), residents of the United Kingdom (8 percent) and Japan (5 percent).

Together, these four countries accounted for 57 percent of all non-resident foreigners who sold U.S. real estate in 2015. They have consistently been the top sellers of U.S. real estate, including in 2013, the first year for which these data are available.

The average price of real estate sold by non-resident foreigners in 2015 was $402,321 – more than double the value of the median U.S. home that year ($181,400 as of December 2015). The IRS withheld $922.3 million worth of real estate taxes from these transactions.

The average price of real estate sold by non-resident foreigners varied widely across groups. Among the top four countries, the average sale price was consistently in the mid-$300,000s: $328,732 for Canadians, $322,441 for Germans, $313,345 for residents of the United Kingdom, and $317,173 for Japanese.

The countries with the highest average sale price tend to be small financial havens.

Residents of Macau who sold U.S. real estate for an average price of $8.4 million in 2015, followed by residents of the Cayman Islands ($2.9 million), the Netherlands Antilles ($2.7 million), Monaco ($2 million), Cyprus ($1.6 million), the British Virgin Islands ($1.5 million) and Luxembourg ($1.2 million). These countries accounted for just 243 sales in 2015, or 0.9 percent of the total.

The average sale price was lowest in 2015 for non-residents from Colombia ($135,221), Israel ($198,937), Venezuela ($210,564) and Argentina ($236,111).

[1] Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Statistics of Income, Withholdings on Dispositions by Foreign Persons of U.S. Real Property Interests: Sales Price and Tax Withheld as Reported on Form 8288-A, by Country of Residence, Updated June 25, 2018.