The reality is that many of the foreign-owned homes here are owned by shadow offshores which are very hard to track.
Btw, tech workers from venture backed startups generally make less than those working for the profitable tech giants, so it's a bit disingenuous to call them overpaid.
Also, you're giving yourself away as an outsider because VC-backed firms significantly underpay compared with the profitable tech giants.
Imagine if we only allowed American car companies to build 1 million cars per year, and them complained about the damn Chinese buying up all the cars.
...
In San Francisco Bay-area locations such as Palo Alto and Woodside, home prices have risen by double digits in the past three years, while the number of buyers from China has nearly doubled since 2012, says Penelope Huang, a broker with Re/Max Distinctive Properties. The increased demand is making the area one of the toughest for younger buyers, she says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/wealthy-chinese-bu...
What % of the total home sales are to foreign residents in the bay area, and what % of those are Chinese?
I think you'll find it's very likely less than 5% - not nearly enough (imo) to move a market enough for it to "crash" if they were to pull out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/wealthy-chinese-bu...
This is affecting the entire market because housing is a fixed supply. Buyers who are getting outbid on one price point move to outbid people at a lower price point, and so on.
This is fixed supply, with foreign entrants, which means new home buyers that invested into planning, saving, and starting the process aren't going to just keep blowing money on renting because their first home is a townhome.
>Buyers who become frustrated tend to shift from looking in popular urban core neighborhoods to suburbs where competition is less intense, or from single-family homes to condos
When I was doing this, I made ~ 15 offers. In all but one I was outbid by a cash-only no-inspections no-conditions offer from china, with the buyer not even present in the country - represented by agent only.
I keep on hearing the same thing that Chinese are buying property in Melbourne(Aus) as well. Do I have any hard numbers, no but what I have observed that many "For Sale" boards also have the information written in Chinese Script.
Make your own conclusions.
They already have an annual limit of $50,000 that can be transferred out of the country, they also ask foreign countries for help in identifying corrupt officials and individuals transferring large amounts out of the country, rich Chinese have strategies to avoid the law.
In my own country i've seen that request largely ignored. The benefits are simply too high, the Govt here is well aware that sizable portions of this money is likely dirty money, but the bottom line for the economy eases that discomfort.
The push to crack down on foreign housing investment in cities across the world lately has been driven by angry locals and soaring house prices, despite the Chinese govt asking for something to that effect for over a decade.
The money isn't 'dirty'. It might be breaking the Chinese government law against transferring more than $50,000 worth of currency out, but that doesn't qualify it as dirty. The law is an infringement of their citizens' right to control their own money. Just because the Western democracies have similarly authoritarian laws these days doesn't make them just and people breaking said laws the equivalent of a corrupt official moving the proceeds of bribes overseas.