There is usually an influx of Chinese buyers flying into Sydney for Golden Week. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

There were very few Chinese property buyers flying out of Sydney after Golden Week. It is the annual early October period when Chinese tourists, taking advantage of their extended national holiday, have often departed Sydney with an investment property.

Agents advise there aren’t as many Chinese apartment buyers, and those interested don’t have the same intensity they once did. There is also the heightened desire for privacy which appears to becoming a paramount concern of those with big money to spend.

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Changes to policy in China has seen a reduction in foreign buyer activity.

Prior years saw top agents pull out all stops with their welcoming red carpet. Chauffeurs in Bentleys were at the airports to then tempt the Chinese holiday-makers to make a purchase.

For a few years now, data from the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) has shown a slowing in investment. There has been a changing landscape of push and pull factors over recent years. Consecutive federal governments headed by Kevin Rudd, through to Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison have obliquely or expressly sought to dampen Chinese residential investment to allow locals to have a better shot at buying.

In 2010, the assistant treasurer Senator Nick Sherry, announced a hotline for the public to report suspicious buyers, amid measures to ensure foreigners did not put “pressure on housing availability for Australians”. Former treasurer Joe Hockey ratcheted up the issue when he asked that one of his Hunters Hill neighbours be investigated by the FIRB after he became suspicious of the circumstances surrounding a purchase.

The sentiment of successive governments had been accompanied by a string of new and higher fees and taxes for foreigners. The past few years have also seen significant policy changes in China, including tighter capital controls, such as limiting the outflow of foreign currency.

Recent unrest in Hong Kong has seen interest in Sydney homes spike. (Photo by Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

All these changes are likely to restrain any foreign buyer activity rebound anytime soon to its previous peak. But it is significant that buyer website search activity from Hong Kong on realestate.com.au has been rocketing over the past six months.

Due to unfolding political unrest in Hong Kong, buyer search interest sits at its highest level ever recorded on the site, REA Group chief economist Nerida Conisbee has noted. While searches from Hong Kong are up, the same cannot be said for China which has dropped by over half in the past year.

Conisbee suggests factors include there being fewer Chinese developers being active in Australia.

This Bellevue Hill home recently sold to buyers from Hong Kong.

She says there was also “a general negative sentiment towards Australian property’’.

The current Hong Kong turmoil reminds many of the heightened purchasing interest in Sydney property in the lead-up to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, when the United Kingdom ended administration of the colony.

For several years after 1997, the property market in Hong Kong fell, in part because of the unease about China’s political grip on its regained territory.

But the 2020 econo­mics of migrating and investing in Sydney, and or the cheaper capital cities like Melbourne, make sense to many in Hong Kong and China who are looking for a more affordable place to live.