Asians Find Attractive Buys in Britain and the U.S.

Darryl Dong lately took his wife, Eva, to New York for a bit of shopping. He had heard there were a number of great sales. But Mr. Dong, a banker based in Hong Kong, was not looking for designer clothes.

In its place, he picked up a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condominium on Sutton Place, an elite street between midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side, for $2 million. He paid one-third less than the $3 million asking price, the cost that a similar unit in the building had sold for in 2007.

Mr. Dong is part of a brook of buyers based in Asia who have become ever more active in Western real estate, particularly in Britain and the United States, snapping up properties at what they regard as to be bargain-basement prices.

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