Foreign buyers forced to sell Vic homes

If the crackdown on illegal foreign investment in Australian housing was a fishing trip, the Victorian leg landed one biggish fish and a few tiddlers.

Foreign buyers are being forced to sell seven properties they snapped up against foreign investment laws after an Australian Taxation Office investigation.

Five are in Melbourne.

The biggest is a mansion in leafy Hawthorn East bought by a Chinese investor for $5.2 million at auction last year.

The five-bedroom, three-bathroom, solid-brick home features "captivating lifestyle features on the doorstep of Melbourne's finest private schools" with a vast garden, landscaped with an in-ground pool and spa and a temperature-controlled cellar.

But the other four, bought by investors from China or Hong Kong, have a combined value of just $1.85 million.

Three were in the gentrified inner suburb of Carlton, but priced well below the Melbourne median house price of $707,415.

The most expensive of the four is an $802,000 property in outer suburban, working class Springvale.

The sale of another property in Melbourne's well-to-do east was blown out of the water before it got anywhere.

An Iranian man was denied permission to buy a $4.4 million home in well-heeled Canterbury because the purchase was deemed not in the national interest.

FORCED SALES IN VICTORIA

Hawthorn East Vic, $5,200,000, buyer from China

Springvale Vic $802,000, China

Carlton Vic, $245,000, Hong Kong

Carlton Vic, $225,000, Hong Kong

Carlton Vic, $585,000, China.