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I don't understand the concern with foreigners wanting to buy real estate. If a bunch of people want to import money from another jurisdiction and use it to bu
by caf 9y ago
I don't understand the concern with foreigners wanting to buy real estate. If a bunch of people want to import money from another jurisdiction and use it to buy something that is literally impossible for them to repatriate, more fool them! Let's take as much of their money as they'll offer.
- wtetzner 9y agoI think the problem is that it drives house prices up.
- derefr 9y agoThey don’t want to repatriate it; they want to get it out of their country as the first step of getting themselves out of their country. (Though, they want to stay as long as possible to squeeze as much dirty money out of their corrupt regime as they can before they do, which is why they aren’t just arriving alongside the money.)
- FooHentai 9y ago>use it to buy something that is literally impossible for them to repatriate The asset being fixed in place does not prevent capital outflows. Plus it depends on the purpose of the investment - If it's a means of just parking money, then the only real impact of the purchase is to deny the same purchase to a citizen of the country. That's not a massive issue unless you have a housing shortage (which NZ does, not aided by it's high level of immigration). If on the other hand a return is expected on that investment then you end up with a situation where house prices raise due (in part) to foreign investment, but people still need to live somewhere and so they rent those houses back from the foreign landlord. This absolutely leads to rent extracts which flow out of the country.