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Comment by nautilus12 | Hacker News Reader

First things first. There are entire buildings in NY and SF just sitting empty because foreign investors use it for money laundering and long term investment. This HAS to be made illegal, people need these homes. I am even a staunch libertarian and I think it should be regulated to buy homes and just let them sit empty. Does anyone know of any movements in goverment or elsewhere to combat this?

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This generates pressure, driving up prices by constricting housing supply sure, but what is preventing SF from constructing lots and lots of new buildings? If there is pressure to increase the amount of available housing, then the government of SF has a Civic responsibility to create an environment where the housing supply can increase. Full stop. Property speculation will always take place.

Because...there is a housing shortage. The definition of a housing shortage is that houses cannot be produced fast enough for people to consume them. Assuming that the supply is what it is, if a large percentage of that supply is being used for investment, then people can't live in them. You have to assume that the economic machine is doing everything it can to increase the supply because then those who benefiet from selling expensive house can _make more money_....

This point of view only makes sense if there is a strong limit on the number of homes that can be built. This is not the case. Both SF & NY can easily build many many more homes simply by building up. The fact that they, for the most part, aren't doing so is a much much much bigger problem than a few empty homes here and there (as a % it's still a very very small number).

I think that if houses could be built more quickly to satisfy both the investment crowd as well as consumers then this would happen because those who benefiet from selling houses would make more money...

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