[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.