Many causes behind this - saying the Chinese are to blame is glossing over the issue IMO and is very much akin to saying tech workers are behind the property is

Many causes behind this - saying the Chinese are to blame is glossing over the issue IMO and is very much akin to saying tech workers are behind the property issues in SFO. There are more sides to this... One of major contributors to rising property prices is the gutting of trust in the stock market or any speculative market for that matter, over the past two decades. Super low interest rates haven't helped either with people looking to park their cash left with property as the only safe place which provides a rate of return. With regards to Chinese buyers, there is some truth (again stressing that it's only a part of the picture). For the past 20 years nearly every trading partner with China has incurred a massive balance of payments deficit. That money's coming home to roost (literally). The same thing happened in the 80s when Japan was an exporting powerhouse - they bought real estate and companies across the US and Europe, pushing up the price of real estate. There was actually an excellent piece in the Prospect by Andy Grove (former Intel CEO) which lamented the loss of manufacturing in the US and the effects it would cause: http://prospect.org/article/andy-grove-trade-globalization-and-defending-america’s-economy http://prospect.org/article/andy-grove-trade-globalization-a... Again just a facet to the picture, but you put all these pieces together and you can see the problem a lot more clearly.