There are a lot of speculators (domestic and foreign) buying US houses because of their appeal to corrupt foreign officials who need to reinvent themselves as legit corporate execs under new identities (and it takes 2-3 years to get the fake jobs and references in place; during that time, a person is living out of his house, which is what makes the Valley so appealing).

I'm completely OK with the US as a place where people from all over the world can reinvent themselves and tell a second chapter of their stories. That's what it's been for hundreds of years, and what made it great. Almost every one of us has at least once ancestor who came here to escape trouble in the old country. I'm not OK with it when it means that Americans are priced out of their own housing, especially now because these corrupt foreign officials aren't even coming here, but just buying real estate just in case things go bad in their home countries. Not only does it make housing unaffordable for us, but there's the moral hazard angle as well: by allowing nonresident foreigners to buy so much of our best real estate, with a great proportion of those being corrupt officials or people seeking resale to them, we're effectively subsidizing corruption in the rest of the world.

(Is it correct that every foreign investor buying real estate is a corrupt third-world ultra-HNWI? No, that's only about 1 in 4. The other 3 are speculators banking on the resale value to corrupt officials abroad.)