Last Monday saw a shocking 8.5% drop of China's market, slashing wealthy Chinese fortunes by hundreds of billions of dollars. While Chinese bank accounts are hurting, the record declines across Asian stock indexes could actually be good news for the New York real estate market as investors continue to seek financial refuge, National Association of Realtor's chief economist Lawrence Yun says. "People want to take their money out of China and put it in a safe location," Lawrence says. As we've reported before, Chinese buyers have quickly become the biggest foreign buyers of US real estate with a list of all-cash trophy purchases, pouring $3.8B into the Manhattan market in the first half of 2015 alone. With the Asian stock volatility, New York's luxury market remains a safe long-term play, even at top-dollar rates. While institutional money has dominated the headlines, individual buyers are coming on strong, averaging $831k/purchase in 2014 with 70% cash buys, according to the NAR. [IBT]