alt Hacker NewsThis will help out home prices in a lot of lower priced markets, but do little in higher priced markets. In the Bay Area, many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals. I've been in a couple of such houses. It's bizarre walking into a $5M+ hilltop mansion that's completely bare inside except for a token "student" living out of one room.
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Kind of great to have someone paying property taxes and using minimal city resources.
It's the same in Southern California. When I sold my first starter home it was bought by internationals to rent. There were already multiple homes on the block owned by foreign interests.
And at the new home I moved into, the house next door is owned by foreign interests and rented out to the highest bidder. It makes it extremely difficult to get anything done that involves shared areas (like common fence or overhanging trees) because the owner is essentially unavailable and doesn't speak english. Not to mention that every year or so we have to deal with renters who are minimally vetted. We've had a group of 5 college kids turn the place into a frat house once. There is also a property management company involved, but they can't get in contact with the owner either.
In my experience, this seems to be a bigger issue than wall street investors.
What is the mechanism that you believe would cause this to lower home prices? Early signals are that the announcement alone will increase prices
> many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals.
Maybe they are next?
Banning people from other countries buying home is both more sensible and more practical than this, which is why very many countries do it.