Plush apartments in New York City's upscale neighborhood, Manhattan, are the favorite playgrounds of China's wealthy. But in recent months, these well-heeled real estate investors chose new properties away from the city center, toward the leafy suburbs of Gold Coast in North Shore and Long Island.

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At first look, access to the beach and marina plus the fresh ocean breeze are reason enough to relocate east of the city. It turned out there are more less obvious reasons for the big move -- including cheaper real property prices and the fact that these are close to top-performing public schools and Chinese communities in Flushing, Queens.

Long Island neighborhoods are not the only places that the Chinese are keeping their eye on. They are also the top buyers of foreign property in 46 of the 50 U.S. states, said the National Association of Realtors.

Juwai.com, a real estate sales site for Chinese buyers, said some customers choose to invest in what they see as low-risk assets, while others are after a trophy house. Several investors see themselves living in these properties full-time, while their children go to the neighborhood's top schools.

From March 2014 to March this year, China's real estate investors forked over US$22 billion for properties in the U.S., which is almost a fourth of sales worldwide. About half of the purchases were in Washington, California and New York, with 46 per cent of the remaining settling in suburbs.

About 37 per cent were in urban areas. Seattle became a favorite real estate haven after the showing of the 2013 Chinese film, Finding Mr Right, which was inspired by Sleepless in Seattle.

In November, the U.S. signed a deal with China that allows citizens of each country to have decade-long business and tourist visas, which removes the hassle of renewing them every year. The agreement prompted more wealthy Chinese to snap up American property offerings.

The co-chief executive of Juwai.com, Andrew Taylor, said the easing of U.S. visa rules makes buying a vacation home in the Big Apple much easier and has certainly led to more purchases.

Tagsreal estate, wealthy chinese, suburb, North Shore, Long Island, U.S. visa