Nearly one in five Realtors has sold a U.S. home to an international client in the past year, with the majority of those sales occurring in the Sun Belt states, according to new research by the National Association of Realtors.

The 2007 NAR Profile of International Home Buying Activity is the most comprehensive research that NAR has conducted to explore the characteristics of second-home purchases in the United States made by international clients. An international client is a foreign citizen living abroad who has legally entered the United States to purchase a home.

A key benchmark that gauges future growth in the home remodeling industry indicates that growth in home improvement expenditures will hold stable throughout 2007, even with recent weakness in house prices and consumer confidence.

According to the indicator, developed by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, homeowner spending for home improvements will essentially remain constant through the first quarter of 2008, and overall growth in spending for 2007 is expected to be 3 percent.

“Homeowners continue to draw on built-up equity in their homes to finance home improvements,” explains Nicolas P. Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies. “However, the pace of spending remains moderate and tempered in the context of a very soft housing market.”