The Week in Corridors: Capital Is Sorting Itself by Fear, Not Exchange Rate

This was a week where four corridors told the same story from four different angles: money is not moving for the reasons most agents assume. I watched Colombian buyers pour into Florida despite a stronger peso, UK buyers pay cash at rates that look like capital flight, and Nigerian diaspora wealth skip the U.S. entirely to go home to Lagos. Underneath all of it sits a structuring trap that is quietly costing cash buyers hundreds of thousands of dollars at death, and almost nobody is talking about it until it's too late.

The Big One

The most consequential story this week isn't a market number, it's a legal trap hiding inside one. In FIRPTA, Entity Structuring, and the Estate Tax Trap Foreign Buyers Miss, I laid out the failure I see most often in my own practice: a foreign buyer purchases U.S. property in their personal name or through a bare single-member LLC, gets told by their accountant it's "clean," and nobody mentions that non-resident aliens get only a $60,000 estate tax exemption. Everything above that is taxed at up to 40% when they die owning the property.

Here is why this matters right now. NAR data shows 48% of foreign buyers paid all cash in the 2025-26 period, at a median purchase price of $465,000. Cash buyers skip mortgage underwriting, which means nobody is forcing a structuring conversation before closing. Every other corridor story this week, Colombia, the UK, Africa, describes a wave of cash-heavy foreign buyers. That's the same population walking into the estate tax trap. This is the connective tissue of the whole week: volume is shifting, but the structuring conversation isn't keeping up with it.

Corridor Movers

• Colombia: Colombian buyer volume in Florida jumped 201% to $925 million even as the peso gained 20% against the dollar, which should have made U.S. property more expensive, not more attractive. The driver isn't currency arbitrage, it's fear of instability under Colombia's untested new administration. Read: Colombia-Florida Corridor: The $925M Rebound Behind a Stronger Peso.
• UK & Europe: UK buyers deployed $2 billion into U.S. homes at a 61% all-cash rate, a signal of wealth leaving the UK entirely, not just lifestyle buying. The corridor is smaller in dollar terms than Colombia's, but the cash rate tells the same story: capital moving out of fear. Read: UK & Europe Buyers: Wealth Flight Is Rewriting the U.S. Corridor.
• Africa: Nigerian diaspora capital is going home, not to Miami. $23 billion flowed into Nigerian real estate in 2025 while total U.S. foreign buyer purchases hit a 14-year low. The only African buyers still active in the U.S. are resident visa holders already living here, not offshore diaspora wealth. Read: The African Capital Reversal: Why Nigerian and South African Wealth Is Flowing Home, Not to the U.S..

The Number

$776,000. That's the estimated estate tax bill on a $2 million Florida condo held improperly by a foreign national at death, calculated off the $60,000 non-resident exemption at the 40% top rate, from this week's FIRPTA structuring piece. I keep coming back to this number because it's not a market statistic, it's a liability sitting inside thousands of closings happening right now across every corridor covered this week. A Colombian family fleeing instability, a UK family moving capital out ahead of tax changes, they are both buying in cash, both skipping financing scrutiny, and both exposed to the same $60,000 trap unless someone structures the deal before contract.

What Practitioners Should Do Monday

• Do not let a cash buyer sign a contract before a structuring conversation happens. For any foreign client over roughly $600,000 in purchase price, bring in counsel to evaluate LLC, trust, or foreign corporation structures against the $60,000 estate tax exemption before you write the offer, not after closing. See the FIRPTA piece for the mechanics.
• If you work the Colombia corridor, stop pitching exchange-rate timing. Buyers in this cohort are moving on fear of instability at home, not currency math. Reframe your outreach around certainty and asset protection, per this week's Colombia analysis.
• If you market to African diaspora buyers, redirect your lead generation toward resident visa holders already living in the U.S. Diaspora remittance capital is going home to Lagos and Accra, not to Miami or Phoenix, as detailed in the Africa corridor piece.