Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

Please don't. The housing market is fucked in EU urban areas now too. Without an inheritance you can't afford to buy anything decent around a developed city with jobs even on a tech salary.

As selfish as this may sound, the last thing we need is more foreign competition on the housing market with bigger pockets.

It would be fair that if people from the US want to buy property here with their foreign megabucks, we should also get unrestricted visa-free access to the US labor market. Tit for tat. Otherwise it's just unfair to Europeans to be outspent out of their own housing market.

View on HN

You've basically described the sentiment and current situation with the US midwest and south.

Yes, because nothing would ruin Albania or Georgia more than a few tech workers siphoning profits from US into their local economies.

Of course it wouldn't ruin the countries themselves, the countries would profit somewhat, but it would however hurt the middle class since now they have more competition on the housing market that's much wealthier so you're increasing inequality.

Just because the country is profiting from your megabucks, doesn't mean the average Joe is.

Look at Austria. The most touristic areas are profiting a lot from all that foreign tourist money, but a lot of the locals can't afford to live there anymore as all that tourist money is only going into a few pockets. Those who don't already own something or have an inheritance have been royaly fucked by that tourist money. It increases inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

> it would however hurt the middle class since

If the middle class are the ones buying the properties, then they're the ones selling them. Therefore it actually injects money into the middle class, foreign capital that never existed in that country.

>he most touristic areas are profiting a lot from all that foreign tourist money, but a lot of the locals can't afford to live there anymore as all that tourist money

Those who move to a country to work and live there on anything but a very short term basis on not generally considered tourists. Most of the money flowing into the rich is a function of capitalism, not just tourism. You can examine virtually any industry and make the same statement. Yet, some fraction of money is usually better than nothing for the middle class people benefitting.

The US has your Austrian analogue, it is called Hawaii. In Hawaii most money is made from tourism. The common person there is mostly employed in tourism. Housing prices are high, because lots of people want to live there. The result when it was mostly closed off for coronavirus was that although demand for housing decreased, unemployment skyrocketed without tourism, making the middle class worse off.

>If the middle class are the ones buying the properties, then they're the ones selling them.

Sorry but since you make no distinction between someone owning and selling a house ($500k asset in Austria) and someone who doesn't own a house and call them both middles class is just plain wrong.

The property owner middle classer is significantly better off than than the other and would benefit even more from your intention of buying while the other middle classer is worse off without a property to his name and will suffer more from being in competition with you.

Sure, one guy profits, but you can't possibly tell me with a straight face someone else doesn't get screwed from this wealth driven game of music chairs which is the property market right now.

You just said the middle class was the competition for these houses. If the middle class are the ones who own these houses it follows they are the ones selling them. You seem upset you were caught up in your fallacious logic and fail to understand it's the middle class making the money off these sales.

I think you misunderstood my comment, but whatever. Still, to follow up on your latest example, the classes below those who own the properties you want to buy get screwed since you're still increasing inequality between the asset owners and the non-asset owners by increasing housing demand. Simple.

I don't follow. The total wealth inside country starts out here:

value of house + value of rest of economy.

Now someone foreign comes into the country to live there and work in tech from abroad. They buy a house. Now the wealth inside the country looks like this:

value of house + foreign money paid for house + value of rest of country.

You can see that the wealth inside the country has increased. If it is the middle class owning those houses, then the wealth of middle class has changed by the difference in value between the value of the house and what it was sold for. The middle class then further benefits from whatever money the foreign worker spends in the country, which is a net gain for the middle class, plus the injection into the economy of the foreign money paid for the house. The only way the middle class end up worse off here is if the foreigner doesn't live and work here, and is just a foreign landlord (siphoning money out of the country) -- which is something I think we can both agree is detrimental.

I will say here in the US people have a lot of problems with foreign landlords and people who buy property here and don't live here. But only the most backwards rednecks have serious issue with an honest foreigner who buys a normal middle class house to live their lives, especially if they are injecting foreign capital into our economy.

I know in Berlin they consider themselves to be having a housing crisis but last I checked apartments in desirable districts of Berlin were like a quarter of Bay Area housing prices, for example < €1000/mo for a 2 bedroom / 50 m^2 apartment.

When was that? Prices are higher now for something decent. Also I was taking about buying property not renting.

>districts of Berlin were like a quarter of Bay Area housing

So what? Nothing touches Bay Area prices, even in the US. And then there's the income difference as well.

Try comparing to something more similar like Texas. Last I checked average dev wages in Austin are easily 2x more than average dev wages in Berlin while buying a house there costs the same. So who's buying power is stronger then?

Buying something decent in Germany now, in the current market is nearly impossible without an inheritance.

Before COVID-19, when I was still allowed to travel :-/

Prices are higher now. And please don't compare Berlin to SF it's apples and oranges.

So are the wages. Or maybe not exactly that bad, but they are no where close.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com