[mschuster91]

> I don't have the numbers but I find difficult to believe that there's enough properties used for money laundering to move the prices.

In London, up to a third of all properties (depending on the area) are left empty. At that point I don't care if it's money laundering or speculative usage, but London's nickname "Londongrad" more than hints that an awful lot of Russian oligarchs used London real estate to launder stolen money [2].

Personally, I'd be fine to ban all foreign investment into real estate in hot housing markets no matter the country, with the sole exception of primary or secondary residence.

[1] https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/how-many-empty-homes-a...

[2] https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/england-london-oligarch...

[bombcar]

That article seems to imply that a decent percentage of the 239k "empty homes" are not actually fit for habitation, at least not immediately.

For comparison, England apparently has 24.7 million "dwelling units" so that's about 1% sitting empty for more than six months.