You know who's grabbing a lot of deals as housing prices remain sluggish around the Bay Area? Canadians. Also, British folks, the French, and some Chinese, Australians, and Germans too. As the dollar remains weak against the euro, foreign investors have been increasingly investing in residential real estate here knowing that not only will they get a lot more for their money than in previous years, but that it also won't be difficult to sell in a few years should they want to.

The Chron doesn't have a ton of hard numbers in this piece from Saturday's paper, but they do cite some data from Trulia searches suggesting 6 percent of all searches for Bay Area real estate are coming from other countries. Also, the National Association of Realtors says foreigners bought about 9 percent of all U.S. real estate last year, accounting for $82.5 billion in home sales, which is up 24 percent over the previous year. Also, there's the anecdotal evidence of brokers here who've been working with more foreign clients, selling vacation homes in Marin to Dubai oil executives, or selling homes to in Silicon Valley to Indian nationals.

This is probably depressing to any of you who are out there looking for a home right now, since you very well might get out-bid by a Russian billionaire who's paying all cash. But, alas, they say that foreign investors are going to slow down soon as housing prices continue to climb.

[Chron]