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A comment on New Zealand to ban foreigners from buying existing houses. Parent comment

Re:New Zealand to ban foreigners from buying existing houses by busterarm on Thursday October 26, 2017 @10:04PM (#15565066)
So my family had a house in Forest Hills Gardens (NYC) that we were selling in early '07 listed at $4.5mil. August-September of that year happened and we had to take an immediate $2mil haircut (eventually more like a $2.4mil one). Luckily it was owned since the 50s and not some crazy leveraged investment vehicle.

It still took an additional 6 years (roughly) to sell, but throughout that whole process, 99% of the potential buyers, including the eventual purchasers, were Chinese nationals. I lived in that house and met everyone that came through (including the time Anna Chapman came through to show the house...wow).

There's an entire class of real estate here that just has no market without Chinese money coming in.

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Re:New Zealand to ban foreigners from buying existing houses by el_benhameen on Thursday October 26, 2017 @11:26PM (#15565484)
Isn’t another way of looking at this to say that the presence of Chinese money artificially inflates the prices of some classes of real estate past what the rest of the market will bear?
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Re:New Zealand to ban foreigners from buying existing houses by busterarm on Friday October 27, 2017 @01:01PM (#15570192)
It's possible. It's also just possible that the average American family in New York doesn't have much need for a house with 5 bedrooms. I don't have enough data points to draw conclusions here.
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