The 48-year-old owner of a media company went on a two-week road trip through the U.S. last fall, visiting scenic sites and checking out properties from Los Angeles to New York. He’s been following the swoon in prices ever since, and next month he’s considering joining another prospecting group that is heading for San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, three of the hardest-hit housing markets in the U.S.

Zhao’s budget: $1 million.

“L.A. is not bad; a lot of Chinese live there,” he said, noting that he was interested in both apartments and houses.

“Before, it was kind of private, a quiet thing among friends,” said Jamie Lee, a Chinese American who runs the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau office in Beijing. “Now it’s full-blown. . . . It’s huge.” Some of these groups “are talking about going every two weeks.”

The tours are a new twist on an old phenomenon.

Overseas Chinese have been buying Southern California properties for years. What’s different now is that they are starting to do it in large groups and quite openly.

Reporting from Shanghai — Caravans of cash-rich Chinese in Hummers and Lincoln Navigators have been weaving through American neighborhoods in recent months, looking for foreclosures and other bargain properties to buy.

With housing prices crashing in the U.S., home-buying trips to America are becoming one of the more popular tour group packages in China. New U.S. visa rules for Chinese tourists and a loosening of foreign investment policies by China have made it easier for people such as Zhao Hongjun of Beijing to go house hunting across the Pacific.