Comment by georgeburdell
2 days ago
This will help out home prices in a lot of lower priced markets, but do little in higher priced markets. In the Bay Area, many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals. I've been in a couple of such houses. It's bizarre walking into a $5M+ hilltop mansion that's completely bare inside except for a token "student" living out of one room.
Banning people from other countries buying home is both more sensible and more practical than this, which is why very many countries do it.
"From" other countries is overly broad and I assume not what you intended. I am actually interested though in the idea of legislating how frequently home owners have to actually be within range of the home, for example. A friend has had a hell of a time with a landlord in Malaysia who's never seen the property.
They do it by citizenship, and you might be surprised how many investment properties are vacant homes, but I’m not necessarily advocating for this in any case. The real cure would just be right to build laws.
The problem is, you can’t do that at the federal level, and the people who vote at the local level are the homeowners who benefit from housing restrictions.
The federal government has a very difficult task. They want to make home prices basically stay flat for a long time, and they have limited tools with which to do it since they can’t do the one thing every economist agrees would solve the problem.
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Many countries prohibit non-citizens from owning any real estate or businesses at all, even if they have a long-term resident status. Thailand is one example. Ownership is limited to 49%, a local partner must own at least 51%.
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Citizenship or long term visa would immediately cut out 90% of the foreign speculators I imagine.
Someone from another country taking ownership of land in your country is practically an invasion.
I'm not sure we'll get china to buy our debt if we do this
related to: Warren Buffett's Thriftville
Its even done in some US territories!
Kind of great to have someone paying property taxes and using minimal city resources.
Feel like that would be cancelled out by the opportunity cost of high network individuals not spending in the area.
Do the math of what it costs a city per resident - napkin math it, total tax intake divided by population. Now compare that to the additional taxes and money that person (who is wealthy) is not injecting into your city.
So out of touch to think the net spend of a gov directly on an individual would be worth sacrificing all of that additional capital injected to your other neighbors and their businesses.
Yes but the area would collect far more revenue overall if an individual of commensurate means was actually dwelling within the dwelling.
Except land is one of a city's most important resources, and they often aren't paying much property tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13).
It's the same in Southern California. When I sold my first starter home it was bought by internationals to rent. There were already multiple homes on the block owned by foreign interests.
And at the new home I moved into, the house next door is owned by foreign interests and rented out to the highest bidder. It makes it extremely difficult to get anything done that involves shared areas (like common fence or overhanging trees) because the owner is essentially unavailable and doesn't speak english. Not to mention that every year or so we have to deal with renters who are minimally vetted. We've had a group of 5 college kids turn the place into a frat house once. There is also a property management company involved, but they can't get in contact with the owner either.
In my experience, this seems to be a bigger issue than wall street investors.
What is the mechanism that you believe would cause this to lower home prices? Early signals are that the announcement alone will increase prices
> many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals.
Maybe they are next?