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"with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country."

If we could prevent them from getting a visa to come at all, we could do the same thing and we wouldn't even have to build the building. Just allocate a few address numbers on ritzy street corners and sell the "buildings" to investors stashing Russian or Chinese black market cash.




Think about all the future and derivative opportunities, too...

Heck, we could do high-frequency house trading!


Of course it's an absurd analogy, there would not be much value if there is no underlying property you can make use of. But I think it illustrates the point well: if the high prices were caused by absent foreign investors, 101 would not be jammed.

More realistically, investors rent out the properties they buy. So a market with tons of foreign investors spending irrationally would have an undersupply of homes to buy and corresponding oversupply of homes for rent. Renters would get a great deal and buyers would get bad ROI.


You could actually do that. If you sold options in an approved development with a five years delay in start time, you'd probably get in plenty of cash and not actually have any new residents. You could get a healthy market going in just the right to own an apartment in the future.




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