Real estate is one of the few mechanisms available for Chinese and dirty money to enter the US.

Every bank and institution is required to have KYC processes. If the money smells even remotely dirty, the customer cannot open an account. Banks are super serious about these regulations.

However, real estate is exempt. Make a shell company, capitalize it with the dirty money, then go buy US real estate. No KYC required, especially if you pay in cash.

Hold the property for a few years then sell it when you need to get clean US money. Piece of cake. Even if you take a loss when you sell it, the haircut is still much smaller than any other form of money laundering. And it's all legal.

When this happened in London, there were whole apartment buildings that were empty. Buyers snapped up everything, but it didn't even bother to rent the apartments.