[zanny]

Policies like that are going to backfire in the long run though. If the wealth being generated by productive exports is being hoarded in unutilized housing there are long tail effects that will slow down the economy - the housing sitting idle isn't productive, and when the investors try to capitalize on their property in the future they will just be rent seeking the difference between the construction price and their sale price.

Its happening around the world. The rich realize that one of the scarcest resources is space and land and are powerful enough to manipulate governments into just letting them hoard their money in housing. Because for the states where this happens everyone loses except the rich - housing becomes prohibitively expensive for the working class, rising property values leech productivity and growth and stall out consumerism, and all the money that created the situation could have better been used creating productive business rather than rotting in a cyclic property investment bubble.