[missedthecue]

New Zealand banned foreign buyers a couple years ago and house prices are up 20-50% nationwide since then.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/119636052/foreign-buy...

The problem is that people chronically overestimate the number of foreign buyers in the market. I can't find data for the Netherlands online, but for other western nations, it is around four or five percent of demand. Removing that will have essentially no noticable impact on housing prices as NZ has learned.

The advantage of a foreign ban is political in nature. Foreigners can't vote in local elections, so politicians lose very little, and the actual electorate is satisfied that government is 'doing something' about the problem.

It's a no lose situation for the politician, but at best it does nothing to reign in the issue of housing costs, and at worst it fans the flames of xenophobia.

[yread]

Foreign investors account for more than half of total real estate investment flows in the Netherlands, see page 8

https://www.bouwinvest.nl/media/4305/bouwinvest-dutch-real-e...

[missedthecue]

That is real estate investment flow. That's not the same thing as housing. The graph you linked shows the majority of the investment going into things like office space, industrial real estate, retail, hotels, healthcare, etc...

[IkmoIkmo]

It must also be noted that the vast majority of these deals aren't homes on the market for locals, they're existing investor real estate.

Sometimes you see articles stating '25% of all homes last year were bought by investors', but failing to mention that 20% of that 25% were homes sold by investors, too. i.e. company A selling to company B, an apartment block fully rented out. Sometimes company A and B are part of the same group structure, and they're simply restructuring. And so really the percentage of investors buying homes that could otherwise be bought by citizens, is actually only 5%.

Secondly, there's a lot of international capital flowing in because capital is extremely mobile and knows no borders. It doesn't mean foreigners own the real estate. Everytime a Dutch investor (e.g. a Dutch pension fund) buys real estate, it typically finances it with a combination of its own money and borrowed money, and the borrowed capital is typically raised on international financial markets.

I find the news is quite unsophisticated in detailing these nuances, and typically chooses the most incendiary headline that they can get away with.

e.g. "25% of homes bought by foreign investors." or hell even "50% of real estate bought by foreign investors", instead of 5% of available homes bought-up by Dutch pension funds", all three statements could be based on the same data-set.

[colechristensen]

Foreign buyers isn’t generally a problem on a national level but on a city or neighborhood level where specific areas are targets.

[missedthecue]

Even still, home prices have risen the fastest in Auckland.