Could Chinese investment boom come to Baltimore?

The Baltimore area  isn’t necessarily a hot spot for Chinese investment.

It wasn’t until June of 2014 that investors first took advantage of  a 1990 law that creates what’s known as EB-5 when Oriental Dolphins, through its regional investment center’s subsidiary, loaned money to MVH Baltimore Hotel LLC to purchase and renovate the former  Mount Vernon Hotel, now Hotel Indigo.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, Chinese investors may be looking to put more money into commercial real estate instead of investing in that country’s flagging stock market.

While wealthy Chinese home buyers have pulled back on U.S. purchases in recent months amid the market turmoil at home, investors looking for commercial property have kept buying aggressively, brokers said. Many have centered on unlikely investments such as small office buildings, chain hotels and other nondescript properties in and around big U.S. cities, seizing an opportunity to place greater sums of money outside their government’s reach. — Wall Street Journal

Although most of this investment is still being drawn into the largest metropolitan areas in the nation, these investors’ preferences for smaller office buildings, strip malls and chain hotels could make Baltimore an interesting place to stash their cash.