Blaming foreign investors for a housing crisis is a smokescreen. It's not the demand from investors that's the issue; it's the government's stifling regulations that choke new construction. The mess is because of state failure, not market failure. When sellers freely sell their homes to foreign buyers, they're making choices that benefit them. Why should we deny them that right? The real absurdity is ignoring the elephant in the room: a bureaucratic quagmire that prevents building enough homes to meet demand. Instead of scapegoating investors, slash the red tape and let the market work.
The Power of Pricing is a thing that exists whether you want it to or not. Smart policy uses it to great advantage. Dumb policy redirects this to hurt those it intends to help. Rent control, restrictions on production, byzantine zoning and construction rules... all contribute to distorting the market in ways that push back on the original (or at least, stated) intentions.
You want housing to be cheaper? Increase supply. That's it. You don't want foreign investment in your properties? Don't make them so damn attractive as pure investment vehicles. How? Increase supply.
There's always a boogeyman to be blamed when markets are so broken like this.
China doesn’t allow non-residents to buy property at all. You have to be working in the city you want to buy in for a few years with documentation if you don’t have hukou there.
Maybe the USA and Canada could do something similar? I find it ironic that it’s primarily Chinese investors who want us to keep our property markets open.
> You want housing to be cheaper? Increase supply.
The USA (and maybe Canada) has large stocks of government land. In my country, most land is privately-owned; interfering with landowners' property rights is seriously destabilising. Property law is the basis of most law.
Absolutely correct. Unfortunately and surprisingly the supposedly educated users of HN are overwhelmingly anti-capitalists somehow, your opinion and mine are decidedly in the minority recently, and that is itself fascinating to me, as I can only conclude the education system is completely broken and failing to teach both basic economics which consists of facts and is scientific and also history. I liken it to teaching creationism over evolution, preferring fantasy over reality.
USA population has increased ~10% in the last 20 years. Why has that small increase in population caused a humongous lack of housing? It feels like something else is going on other than "we need to increase supply by 10% but can't"
As Sean mentioned, not only have we increased in total population we have also changed where we are living. Lots of small towns have seen their populations decrease, with some completely disappearing. Large neighborhoods of cities like Detroit and elsewhere essentially emptied. We need more housing and we need to shift housing resources to where the demand is.
There are loads of cheap houses in the USA. They're just in places where most people don't want to live.
Places you don’t care about, like Jackson Ms, Detroit, Toledo, Gary. Recently, we see falling housing prices in Las Vegas and Phoenix, although they are probably ahead of where they were before the pandemic.
in the asset bubble leading to the 2008 credit collapse, the only area in the continental USA that had decreasing housing prices in large areas was .. the Ohio Valley. (likely plenty of niche areas too but that is what stuck out)
