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I think the reason people dislike foreign capital specifically is when the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty. It is bad enough when capital (local

I think the reason people dislike foreign capital specifically is when the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty. It is bad enough when capital (local or foreign) drives up home prices, but it feels worse when the homes sit empty. Note, this affects everyone because people get knocked down the ladder incrementally.

grandmczeb 9y ago
When I lived in NYC, a famous celebrity had a condo in the same building as me. As far as I could tell, it never got used. Weirdly enough no one minded until it sold to someone from Saudi Arabia.
- cletus 9y ago
  Bono lives in one of the towers of the San Remo building on CPW. He bought it from Steve Jobs who had owned it for ~20 years famously never having set foot in it. The other tower was owned by Bruce Willis and Demi Moore bought in 1990.im not sure they ever lived there either. Eventually Demi Moore got it 8n the divorce and sold it recently. And this is in a coop, which tend to be far more owner-occupied. Luckily for Manhattan the vast majority of hous8ng stock is coops. If it were nothing but the luxury piggy banks being built on 57th street the city would be a ghost town.
dnautics 9y ago
> the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty seems like a poor investment to me. You're just pissing it away on property taxes. So why not let the rich do this and basically redistribute their wealth?
- QAPereo 9y ago
  It makes sense if you want to exfiltrate your money from the Russian mob, or Chinese communist party.
- pjc50 9y ago
  You get the property appreciation, potentially leveraged; and you get what might be called the "option value" of being able to move into and sell it at a moment's notice. Weirdly, many of the foreign moneyed people know that they and/or their family may have to drop everything and leave their country of origin at any point to flee a purge, and the property is a bolthole for that possibility and a financial reserve that is hard for China to seize.

grandmczeb 9y ago

When I lived in NYC, a famous celebrity had a condo in the same building as me. As far as I could tell, it never got used. Weirdly enough no one minded until it sold to someone from Saudi Arabia.

cletus 9y ago
Bono lives in one of the towers of the San Remo building on CPW. He bought it from Steve Jobs who had owned it for ~20 years famously never having set foot in it. The other tower was owned by Bruce Willis and Demi Moore bought in 1990.im not sure they ever lived there either. Eventually Demi Moore got it 8n the divorce and sold it recently. And this is in a coop, which tend to be far more owner-occupied. Luckily for Manhattan the vast majority of hous8ng stock is coops. If it were nothing but the luxury piggy banks being built on 57th street the city would be a ghost town.

dnautics 9y ago

> the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty seems like a poor investment to me. You're just pissing it away on property taxes. So why not let the rich do this and basically redistribute their wealth?

QAPereo 9y ago
It makes sense if you want to exfiltrate your money from the Russian mob, or Chinese communist party.
pjc50 9y ago
You get the property appreciation, potentially leveraged; and you get what might be called the "option value" of being able to move into and sell it at a moment's notice. Weirdly, many of the foreign moneyed people know that they and/or their family may have to drop everything and leave their country of origin at any point to flee a purge, and the property is a bolthole for that possibility and a financial reserve that is hard for China to seize.