[JumpCrisscross]

> every foreigner buying a house still results in 1 less house for Spaniards

In a very limited scope, sure. What that foreign capital also does is lower risk and thus capital costs for development and improvement. (In the event of a limited crisis, for lenders as well.) Whether the net effect goes one way or another is more complicated than what you describe.

Put another way, if foreigners could only buy unbuilt units, would you still say they're resulting in fewer houses for Spaniards? Do the countries shunned by foreign investors have affordable housing?

[motorest]

> Put another way, if foreigners could only buy unbuilt units, would you still say they're resulting in fewer houses for Spaniards? Do the countries shunned by foreign investors have affordable housing?

Exactly, and to further drive the point home the real estate investments driven by foreign investment are targeting entirely different markets, such as luxury homes and tourism, whereas the complains about lack of access to housing come from those who already struggle to buy the cheapest units in working class suburbs, where the foreign investments are clearly not being made.

So the question you should be asking is how come you're not seeing investments in affordable housing across the country at a time where you see foreign investment in luxury and tourist areas. Then you'd realize that you're discussing two entirely different things that bear no relationship.

[est31]

Often, very often, foreign investment is directly correlated with tourism-gentrification, aka driving out the poor working class people from some location, because it looks "authentic" and is centrally located, into ugly looking places at the outskirts of the city.

But this can happen whether people from outside buy it or not. As long as there is demand for tourism, and some countries are richer than others, this will happen.

[rgtank108]

What is this contrarian sophistry? In Europe foreigners often buy the most expensive historical real estate they can lay their hands on.

If they do build something, it is office buildings for investment that take up space and often remain empty (Chinese are good at that). These investments still take up space and drive up real estate prices.

Where do you even live?

[JumpCrisscross]

> In Europe foreigners often buy the most expensive historical real estate they can lay their hands on

Source? (I'm generally hugely sceptical of uniform statements about how capital behaves across the EU, let alone Europe.)

[ryan_lane]

Where's the source for your assertion? You're making a claim that foreign investment is beneficial with no source, but then requiring one when someone disagrees with you?

[sadeshmukh]

A theoretical argument was countered with an assertion - it's plausible that investment -> lower risk, but there is no reasoning to get "foreign investment is focused on X area".

[ryan_lane]

"What that foreign capital also does is lower risk and thus capital costs for development and improvement."

Not a theoretical argument. An assertion.

[sadeshmukh]

I mean, I can see a reason provided. Isn't that the whole point of foreign direct investing? That's more than an assertion - that's why I call it a theoretical argument. There's no need to debate semantics.

[WorkerBee28474]

A source is not required for something to be true. An uncountable number of things that are true have no source to back them.

[motorest]

> A source is not required for something to be true.

If it was really true then why would you have so much trouble providing anything at all that would back it up?

[motorest]

> What is this contrarian sophistry? In Europe foreigners often buy the most expensive historical real estate they can lay their hands on.

Yes, they make real estate investments in luxury and high-end sector, some of which boarded up for decades.

It's not like your average working class citizen is on the house for a manor house in the city center.

These are not the same markets.