Zhang, the CEO, said the project in the trendy Williamsburg neighborhood on Brooklyn's waterfront, "will offer a quality residential condominium development to more than 200 New York families, as well as allow us to capture a large demand from China for quality residential product in the United States".
The site is considered "shovel-ready", having had $8 million invested for permits and other clearances by its previous owner, from whom New York real estate investor Richard Kalikow took over the property through foreclosure earlier this year.
The below-market price set by Kalikow was attractive to Xinyuan, which had been seeking land in New York City on which to build condominiums, according to Omer Ozden, who advised the Chinese company on the deal.
Xinyuan said it plans, after some design modifications, to begin construction on the site during the first half of 2013. It hopes to capitalize on high demand for condo residences in Brooklyn, said Ozden, who is also the managing partner of Beijing Capital Investment Co.
"It's a real bargain," he said. "We selected this lot for its attractive price, approval of development, proximity to Manhattan, potential to grow and clear title."
The parcel will yield 216 condo units with net salable floor space of about 400,000 square feet (37,161 square meters). Most of the units will be approximately 1,900 square feet (177 square meters), which is fairly large by New York standards, said Gurnee, Xinyuan's financial chief.
Xinyuan expects to have a mix of local and Chinese buyers for its Brooklyn condo project,
"We target all kinds of buyers, but we expect 40 percent of sales to go to Chinese buyers and 60 percent to New York residents" including those who might have been priced out of the costlier Manhattan market, Ozden said.
The site in the most populous of New York's five boroughs is close to the East River and the Williamsburg Bridge, and offers views of downtown Manhattan. It's expected to be part of the next phase of "gentrification", or redevelopment designed to attract higher-income residents, that parts of Brooklyn have been undergoing since the mid-1990s.
But while prices and sales activity have been stable in the three years since the height of the crisis that hit New York's financial-services industry hard, demand has been rising, local developers say.
While market conditions are favorable, particular challenges are bound to await any foreign investor, such as adapting to local laws and business practices, Fasulo said. For companies like Xinyuan, having a US office to handle deals can be helpful, but doesn't guarantee success.
"Xinyuan does not have any competitive advantage over other developers," Fasulo said. "It is complex to build a building anywhere, and it's more complex to have your headquarters 10,000 miles away."
Scissors, of the Heritage Foundation, said: "My advice is to invest here if one is interested in multiple purchases. There are quite a large number of legal documents which can be bewildering in the first purchase but the process will become much easier to understand after that."
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