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New Zealand bans sales of homes to foreigners
New Zealand's parliament has banned many foreigners from buying existing homes in the country - a move aimed at making properties more affordable. The ban only applies to non-residents. Australians and Singaporeans are exempt because of free-trade deals.
New Zealand is facing a housing affordability crisis which has left home ownership out of reach for many. Low interest rates, limited housing stock and immigration have driven up prices in recent years.
[...] [Foreigners] are now banned from purchasing most types of homes - but they will be able to make limited investments in new apartments in large developments.
[...] Chinese investors have been among the biggest and most active offshore buyers of property in the New Zealand market. Also, some wealthy Americans - like Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel - have become New Zealand citizens or have bought property in the country. Average prices in New Zealand have risen more than 60% in the past 10 years, while in Auckland - the country's largest city - they have almost doubled.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday August 16 2018, @09:34PM (13 children)
The rich are at fault, and the foreign are blamed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @09:40PM
Speculators and greedy real estate agents. Foreign based billionaires buy up huge tracts of pristine land and then citizens lose access. Auckland is a disaster zone. The elderly cannot keep up with rates hikes and are taking to living in their cars, the working poor are a swelling number who cannot even meet the rents (rent pays the landlord's mortgage and rates plus a chuck for the greedy landlord). Many landlords are foreigners who are in absentia or if they are in NZ are only here to buy up more homes and turn them into rentals. This law change is about 15 years too late.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Mykl on Thursday August 16 2018, @11:27PM (11 children)
In the case of New Zealand it is actually the foreigners who are to blame.
New Zealand's total population is about 4.9 million. That's less than 1/286th of China's population of 1.403 billion. In other words, the top 0.35% of China's wealthy outnumber the entire population of New Zealand.
Chinese nationals have been looking for ways to safely store cash offshore for years now. Property in stable democracies is a very popular investment, and New Zealand is one of the most stable and safe democracies in the world. This alone has driven a massive amount of buying from Chinese investors.
Australia enacted similar restrictions about a year ago, which (amongst other reasons) has already led to modest drops in housing prices across major markets [news.com.au].
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday August 16 2018, @11:51PM (2 children)
Good leadership puts its own people first, whether or not the rich foreigners driving property costs out of reach of the domestic population are Chinese. Even fucking Mexico does this with coastal property. Now it is time for America to do the same...
...or the next best thing, like Australia, which is to give Whites preferred immigration status.
Personally I like the idea of allocating Mississippi to being our "foreigner containment zone." All 'dem po' folks who bought a shack for $20, 000 bucks can sell it to foreigners for millions and move to a state with a higher standard of living, and rich Chinese can have a sensible backup plan -- they're already used to eating mudbugs and having to shit in holes dug in the ground. Having half-functional electricity and being able to flush their toilet paper down the toilet, and not having their organs harvested for insulting the nation's leadership, would be well worth the humidity.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @12:11AM (1 child)
Again with the stupid. Give it a rest already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @06:08AM
He's proposing using real estate sales on a free market to achieve one-time wealth redistribution.
Your only problem with it is that it's anti-capitalist/globalist, i.e. your 1%er masters will be indirectly harmed by a handful of proles rising above their station in life.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @01:23AM (4 children)
Typically outsiders visiting is good for the economy as they bring their money with them, but artifically accelerating the exhaustion of real estate probably just hurts the average inhabitant more overall. Presuming the assessment is absolutely correct in NZ, I don't have a gram of doubt in their decision.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @05:37AM
Somehow, 30% doesn't strike me as a majority. You can't count. More likely, you can't tell the difference between Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, Sikh, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese...
In the 1990s, when the British lease on Hong Kong was clearly not going to be renewed, Vancouver rolled out a welcome mat and practiced their welcoming hug. It paid off handsomely, there were a few years of construction boom, and then things settled down. You'd have to be a local to notice the difference; BC had a large Chinese contingent to begin with, as the western Canadian railways were pretty much built by them over 150 years ago. But the Chinese ethnic composition has nothing to do with the current real estate bubble.
That is 100% the government, banks, and real estate industry turning a blind eye to foreign money laundering. A report came out earlier this year that under the previous administration whenever junior government staff (not in on the take) raised the issues with their superiors, they got told "we're looking into it, thank you, leave it be."
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 17 2018, @11:40AM (2 children)
In London it is Russians, or so they say. I have no statistics to back up the anecdotal evidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2018, @03:21PM (1 child)
muslims now own a large portion of London
England has a problem.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/743825/1000-Muslims-close-London-streets-chant-Allahu-Akbar-demand-Islamic-caliphate [express.co.uk]
"A poet invited to talk shouted: "We need a Caliph who will clean up these streets. Who will smack up armies and who will back beef [fighting].
"Backhand your missiles back to your land, that’s the plan.
"World domination at hand. We can expand and take out these fools.""
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2018, @03:23PM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523658/Muslim-campaigners-protest-sale-alcohol-popular-East-London-area.html [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 17 2018, @10:47AM (2 children)
Instead of banning them, why not tax them?
Owners not resident in the country at least 9 months of the year can pay a foreign ownership property tax, rate to be raised until the problems subside.
This doesn't stop retiree immigrants, but I don't think they're the real problem, are they?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 17 2018, @01:58PM (1 child)
Because the trick of it is, the only wealth they're moving into the country is exactly enough to own the land.
There really needs to be an international standard that above a certain level of income, hiding assets from taxation is a capital* crime.
* see what I did there, see? SEE? SEE?????
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 17 2018, @05:29PM
Property tax is an awesome method of wealth extraction... just look at all the empty beachfront mansions in Florida - it's a huge income base for the counties, and nearly 100% of that money is coming into the county from the outside. Not only do they pay property taxes, but they also don't "tax" the infrastructure since they're rarely, if ever, there - no additional traffic on the roads, especially no additional children in the public schools, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]