[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.

[ryan_lane]

For a lot of foreign investment, the point is to hide money. A lot of investment provides negative value. Hidden money in residential real estate inflates the market and in most of these cases they also leave the units vacant, reducing housing stock. In some cases it isn't to hide money, but instead for speculation, and usually in those cases they also leave the units vacant, because occupied units can reduce value, and in those cases it's also reduced stock and inflated markets.

[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.