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Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

Housing was already expensive in 2000, well before the current "foreign invasion."

Perhaps they should try reducing the red tape required to build new homes.

They are not placing all blame on foreign soeculative real estate investors, but are assigning some blame, which i think is fair.

Many countries require some form of either citizenship or residence in order to qualify as a real estate buyer.

I didn't mean to suggest that foreign speculation was without blame.

I just wanted to make it clear that that isn't the only, or even biggest, culprit in the current housing crisis.

How would you prevent new housing stock from being similarly bought up?

> Many countries require some form of either citizenship or residence in order to qualify as a real estate buyer.

...like China.

Or Switzerland.

And many south east asian countries!

According to the Case-Shiller U.S. Home Price Index, house prices are almost 2x as high as Jan 2000. Is that not a significant increase to you (inflation was 1.5x during this time)? And that is an average, as urban areas have experienced fast growth.

Are there any numbers from areas with expensive housing that detail foreign investment as a % of total housing purchases? Would be an illuminating stat.

They have a graph in the article that showed foreign ownership (not necessary as investment) that showed it at around 3% for NZ over all, with between 5-10% in popular places (Queenstown and Auckland)

Foreign investments only go to the biggest city. It's meaningless to look at anything besides that.

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