I’ve heard of it too, apparently foreign money (mostly China) needs a legit way to pull the money out of their country and real estate is a good way to do it that doesn’t alarm regulators. Can’t say why it doesn’t make sense to rent it out. But I do know that Vancouver passed laws to limit this type of purchase.

Did Vancouver pass limits on foreign purchases because that was the underlying reason for the high cost of housing, or did they pass limits because that was easier than actually building new housing?

Building housing must be stopped at all costs.

>Even if we buy the exotic premise that investors would buy houses and leave them empty - generating zero rental income for these greed driven people - as an investment, we still have to explain why they would only do this with new housing stock.

Where I live the housing prices are expected to go up roughly 15% this year. So someone buying a house for 600k can expect to sell it for 690k making 90k. That is 7500 USD a month. If you wanted to make that much money from rent you would have to squeeze 4 or 5 tenants into the property. It is simply not worth the hassle trying to rent buildings out when house prices go up at such a high rate

> If you wanted to make that much money from rent

It's not either/or, which is why I'd assume the parent poster called it weird. That investor could make the appreciation and of top of it could make the rental income. So it is weird, from their perspective, to leave it empty. If they're flipping real estate for profit (as opposed to buying a home to live) why reject the extra income.

Also, selling a rental property with a solid history of rental income tends to be better than one with a history of sitting empty. Although that probably doesn't apply to mansions.

My point is you can do both.

Make $7500/month from house value increase, and also, say, $4k from rent.

This increases the resale value since the house is generating income to the buyer.

Homeless people of people with low income cannot afford $4k rent. Also I find it preposterous that people can make $7.5k/month in the first place from just house value increase. At the rate at which housing get more and more expensive we will soon reach a point where new home owners will never be able to fully pay a mortgage back