Everyone knows that English and Spanish are widely, and probably equally, used across the great city of Miami. It’s probably safe to assume that a majority of Miami residents are somewhat, if not fully, bilingual in both languages. This is obviously quite useful for every day life, as well as for business matters and engaging with tourists since many of them hail from Central and South America. But, Miami isn’t the only metropolis where fluency in Spanish is not just important, but crucial to real estate success. It turns out that Spanish is basically the second language for New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles as well. And, when it comes to the language of real estate, these four major cities all see quite a few property purchasers who share a linguistic and cultural heritage. Of course, Spanish takes the top spot, but quite a few buyers from abroad are native French or Russian speakers, regardless of the city in which they are purchasing property.
In Miami, after Spanish, the top real estate purchasers speak French, Russian, Portuguese, and Italian. In New York, after Spanish, buyers speak French, Russian, Mandarin, and Italian. Thus, the only difference between Miami and New York is that the fourth most spoken language is Portuguese and Mandarin, respectively. This isn’t that surprising given the large number of Brazilians investing in South Florida, and there is obviously quite a large Chinese population in various boroughs in New York.
In Los Angeles, Mandarin, French, and Russian prevail, followed by an interesting tie between Armenian speakers and Korean speakers. In Chicago, agents can expect to hear the unusual variety of Polish, Russian, French, and Greek. We recently mentioned the surge in sales from international buyers, so this detailed analysis of their country of origin and native language adds an interesting dimension. For agents who don’t speak a second language, please consider this the list from which to choose!