OK, these stories about hordes of Chinese folks traveling to the U.S. on house-buying sprees are starting to annoy me. Here’s the latest in Shanghai Daily:

Yin Guohua, a 45-year-old lawyer in Beijing, just completed a 10-day, five-city tour of the United States that didn’t include the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge or any other popular tourist sites. He was in the US scouring the collapsed housing market to see what bargains might be for the taking.

Yin was one of 30 Chinese, selected from 500 initial applicants, who went on a house-hunting trip to New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas that ended on March 5. They viewed homes in the US$300,000-US$500,000 price range, one-third of them in foreclosure.

“What with the subprime mortgage crisis, I assumed it could be a good time to buy a home in the US,” said Yin, who has practiced real estate law for 15 years. He spoke to Shanghai Daily by phone after returning to Beijing.

“Prices in the US have plunged as much as 30 percent, which has opened up some very good investment opportunities.”

What’s wrong with this picture? For one thing, look at this time series for average U.S. home prices, from the U.S. census:

• 2002 — $228,700
• 2003 — $246,300
• 2004 — $274,500
• 2005 — $297,000
• 2006 — $305,900
• 2007 — $313,600

That’s a damn fast rise, and it was a lot faster in the markets cited by the article, and where these folks are going. Maybe it’s just me, but when you take 20 or 30% off a house whose price rocketed well over that amount over the past few years — well, that doesn’t seem to be such a great deal to me. Kind of like when a retailer raises prices and then puts the product “on sale” for slightly more than the original price.

Another point to mention is that anyone buying these houses as investments have got to be smoking some loco weed. Housing prices will languish in the U.S. for many years to come, and particularly in the Sun Belt. Moreover, once oil prices go back up again (just a matter of time), living in Vegas or LA or any suburb will include spending lots of cash on gasoline.

I do note that some of these purchasers are looking to buy places for their kids who are going to school or may settle down permanently in these cities. That does make some sense, but in a lot of these articles, you get the sense that some of these “tours” involve marketers who talk up the long-term prospects of the U.S. real estate market.

I don’t know of any reasonable investments these days, so I understand that there is a pent-up demand for this sort of thing. I also see that the prospect of owning a place in LA or San Francisco sounds awesome. But folks, I hope you are running the numbers and looking at market forecasts before you put down such large sums of money.