The Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York

Chinese companies are selling off U.S. properties like the Waldorf Astoria. When Wu Xiaohui, Anbang Insurance Group’s billionaire founder, bought Manhattan’s landmark Waldorf Astoria in 2015, he said he planned to hold onto the hotel for 100 years. Only two years later, however, he was arrested. Anbang was officially taken over by the Chinese government in February, and Wu pleaded guilty in March to fraud and embezzlement, facing a potential life sentence. The company’s U.S. assets – including the famous hotel – are back on the block.

Anbang is among a list of Chinese conglomerates that went from buying up billions of dollars of hotel and office buildings in the U.S. to collectively selling them off in just a couple of years. From HNA Group to Dalian Wanda Group, Beijing’s tighter grip on capital outflows has brought down once high-flying deal makers and prompted Chinese companies to reverse course and to sell their recently-acquired overseas assets.

“Few could have predicted Chinese buyers’ fast entry” a few years ago, said Richard Hightower, Real Estate Analyst at the New York-based investment bank Evercore ISI. “And few could have predicted their quick exit either.” At the height of the buying spree, Chinese companies invested a total of USD37 billion in U.S. real estate from 2014 to 2016, according to Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based commercial property data provider. Many of the assets are now in the market to be sold as the Chinese government reins in the risks imposed on the companies as well as the financial system as a whole from the debt-fueled acquisitions. The sharp reversal has sparked hopes among U.S. investors, including the Blackstone Group, that a potential fire sale of these assets could create buying opportunities.

But while talks are continuing about buying back San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis in San Francisco and JW Marriott Essex House in New York – two hotels Blackstone sold to Anbang through Strategic Hotels & Resorts in 2016 – Waldorf Astoria is a much harder deal. The hotel, part of which is being converted into condominiums, is hard to value because it is no longer entirely a hotel, analysts said. That, combined with financial factors like the lack of cash flow during the renovation, makes it a difficult property to assess for real estate buyers specializing in hotels.

Wall Street investors acknowledge that despite the pressure on Chinese companies to sell, many have managed to turn a profit. HNA’s unloading of its stake in Hilton Group is expected to generate USD2 billion in profit, the South China Morning Post reports. HNA Group has sold USD13 billion of assets in recent months and is continuing to sell more.