Comment by Balinares
18 hours ago
Well, there are multiple approaches, but here's one that worked well for me: when I purchased a home in the country where I now live, and the mortgage lender asked for a credit report from the (high-privacy) country where I lived the longest, what they got was a letter from that country's central bank listing the penalties for requesting that information. Up to and including jail time.
Suddenly the credit report was no longer a prerequisite to the mortgage.
That is rad. Is your high-privacy country friendly to immigrants? Asking for a friend...
But for real. You say you no longer live there, so I'm assuming you left for more opportunities. My wife and I are interested in countries with opportunities for engineers and privacy. Bonus points if there is engineering research opportunities.
Wouldn't this make credit riskier for lenders, reducing access to credit in general and thus making housing less accessible especially to working people?
Not asking polemically, I just have never studied economics and wonder if my intuition here is flawed
I think the actual trade-off is between average acceptable risk at society level.
Some societies prefer huge risks for huge benefits, in those one (might) need a more detailed credit reports because everything is faster, people accept huge risks and the situation can suddenly change.
Some societies prefer more stability. Lower risks, lower surprises. Less opportunities, everything is slower, people can't even take that many risks, simpler histories will do th trick.
From what I notice though, housing seems to be a problem in both types of societies, irrespective on how credits are given, because there are other things involved (regulation, NIMBY, housing used as value, airbnb, geography, etc).
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You are so full of BS it's scary. No credit report is a non-starter at any financial institution that wants to stay in business. They won't be giving you a loan unless they know you are wealthy e.g. own 17 investment properties already. 'High-privacy' countries is code for 'tax-haven', and 'my money in the Cayman Islands' means your bank is about to run afoul of AML and KYC laws if they give you a loan. And this is the whole world: doing business with America means adopting their financial posture i.e. penalties for doing business with money launderers.