[damnyou]

Why should different rules apply to foreigners in this context? An American billionaire buying a few condos and keeping them empty has the exact same effect as a Chinese billionaire doing so.

Rules around vacant homes are good, though, and I strongly support them.

[hello_moto]

> An American billionaire buying a few condos and keeping them empty has the exact same effect as a Chinese billionaire doing so.

There are more nuances to this. Chinese millionaires and billionaires don't care about the sales price. They do it to diversify their portfolio to avoid CCP. Some of them did this to launder the dirty money as well.

Their numbers might be small but the chilling effect of outbidding everybody else outrageously will incentivized realtors to spread the "good news" to their customers/clients that "hey... that unit over there is sold $ x million dollars, would you be interested to sell yours as well?"

Suddenly before you know it, the market is f*cked.

[rb808]

At least an American billionaire pays some American taxes. If a foreign speculator makes a lot of money they aren't even paying any income or capital gains taxes here.

[tareqak]

An vacancy tax deals with both domestic and foreign buyers keeping homes unoccupied. Here is the link to the city of Vancouver’s Empty Home Tax: https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-t... .

[asdfadsfgfdda]

They are still paying plenty in property tax. From the city's perspective, you couldn't ask for a better resident. Somebody who pays full property tax and consumes almost no services (schools, police, etc).

[s0rce]

Why is the city's perspective purely financial? Shouldn't it be driven by the needs of the residents? City residents need housing and the the local business need inhabitants. If you extend your "city" to the limit it would just be a giant physical investment with buildings no one lives in. The city, basically just an investment company would have a lot of money from the taxes and providing minimal services but until that happens the actual residents should drive the policies, in my opinion.

[zapita]

They often pay very little property tax, thanks to California prop 13. Long-time property owners are incentivized to just ride the real estate boom with a vacant building that costs them nothing. The city gets almost no tax revenue, and the neighborhood is crippled in its development.

As a bonus those property owners are politically active and fight zoning reform and development/transit projects to protect aforementioned real estate boom.

[compiler-guy]

They do consume one thing: housing stock that would otherwise be available to residents. Whether or not that outweighs the benefits of paying taxes but not consuming city services is a different issue.

[logfromblammo]

The roads, pipes, cables, buses, firefighters, and cops have to go past the empty house to reach the occupied houses on the other side of it.

Even if the empty home consumes no water, electricity, classroom capacity, bus seats, etc., it still consumes police and fire protection services. Someone else's empty home can be used for crime without worrying about civil forfeitures.

A better resident lives in their home, and cares about what is happening in its neighborhood.

[hello_moto]

They drive artificial demands which increases the overall price.

At the end of the day, it's not good for the local residents.

It's not as simple as "they're not here thus they're not consuming any services". The resulting effect of sky-high property cost ripples to everything else below it (jobs, transportation, etc).

[finaliteration]

But they also don’t participate in the local economy and can just blindly vote against anything that impacts their bottom line (e.g. tax increases) rather than having to interact with and see the impact on people who actually live and work there whose lives are impacted by local and regional politics.

[klipt]

> if a foreign speculator makes a lot of money they aren't even paying any income or capital gains taxes here.

False, even if you're not US resident, you still have to file non-resident tax returns and pay taxes on all US sourced income.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/nonr...

> A nonresident alien (NRA) usually is subject to U.S. income tax only on U.S. source income.

[damnyou]

American billionaires dont pay much taxes either.

The solution to this is to fix the tax code, not retreat further into nationalism.

[amenod]

The cynic in me would correct you that neither pays much taxes.

[davidw]

Everyone gets to feel good if they can blame "the wealthy foreigners" rather than look at their own crappy housing policies, such as the rampant NIMBYism and huge market distortion from Prop 13.

Faceless "wealthy foreigners" are easier to dislike than their own neighbors who show up at planning commission meetings to rant about someone adding an extra bedroom to their home (this is an actual thing I read about in San Francisco).

[sidlls]

Where I live "wealthy homeowners" are the NIMBYs. They suddenly appear out of nowhere to argue in city council meetings against more housing, then leave their homes empty more than half the year (or all year). That most of them are also foreign is incidental: it'd be just as bad if it were Americans doing this.

[davidw]

Foreigners cannot vote, so it seems odd that the city council would pay that much attention to them.

My point is that there's a small but persistent current of thought regarding the housing crisis that wants to pin the blame on "wealthy foreigners buying up all our real estate", as sort of an 'out' for taking a good, hard look at local housing policies.