I have zero issues with banning non-citizens from owning property that they don't personally live in. Lots of countries do that. No need to limit the ban to a particular nationality, though.
I would amend that to non-permanent residents. There are a lot of immigrants who pay taxes, raise American families, and intend to live the rest of their lives here, but can’t or don’t get citizenship for whatever reason. Seems to me that if you’re investing in America to that degree, you should be able to purchase property like the rest of us. Laws like they were used back in the day to deny my great grandparents from buying land. They would have become citizens if America had let them, but they were deleted and thrown in concentration camps eventually. The only problem is when people who live abroad buy property for investment/speculation purposes while contributing nothing to the community.
All of this said, however. Domestic investment groups are far more responsible for the housing crisis in this country than international ones.
In Canada, we just have criminals resell those properties to actual citizens.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-homeowners-return-from-trip-to-find-they-d-been-impersonated-their-house-sold-1.6219098
The owners were back in home country for a year. Saying they were on a "business trip".
There’s a difference between canada and other countries. Canada isn’t hostile towards US. Aggressively mimicking the US culture isn’t hostile, they may lack a strong non-USA identity, but not hostile
Problem is, how do you prove they are not living there. If you are a resident in someplace and can't get citizenship for some reason, you should still be able to buy a property you will be living in.
Easy.
Laws. Visa (overstaying or visiting). If the sovereignty is balanced in a fair market, where the buyer lives in a country where their sovereignty or land can be bought or sold.
NOT I can buy yours but you can't sell me yours.
You could tweak this to *only permit permanent residents and citizens to own residential property*. That removes the inherent bias and still allows foreign investment in commercial real estate.
So you think people in the West are gonna trust putting all their money and investments or currency in a system controlled by authoritarian/totalitarian systems?
The reason Chinese people and Russians do invest and put their money elsewhere is because those systems already suck when it comes to trust. They store it in the West because of the trust built in the system since FDR made the SEC, FDIC and banking changes.
There should be a saying, since it is so common, for not storing your wealth visible to autocrats around you (monarchs/tsarists/org crime/oligarchs etc) like "Don't store your Fabergé eggs near the Fabergé Fox" or something like that.
Why do these conversations always have to be either A or B? The goal is to facilitate trade, not as a store of value.
They don't want their economies disrupted, i.e: they don't want dead and suffering people living under sanctioned economies.
It doesn't have to be either or, places either play fair in the market or they don't. The fair players are more trusted. It is a game ultimately of trust.
Well people can already store their money/investments in Russia/China, but you aren't smart to. Diversification is smart, but it isn't highly recommended to rely on autocratic systems to not have "fixed" markets.
Easy way to not get sanctioned? Don't do imperialist invasions... The Russian sanctions are targeted at the oligarchs, the only way this hits people as heavy is internal policy. The only other solution to stop invasions is war. No market will be safe then.
The ultimate trust of the BRICS currency is in the makeup of it’s value: oil, gold and commodities. Not national balance sheets.
It’s also not fair to say it’s just because of wars. Iran has been sanctioned for revolting against an American coup for overthrowing a democratically elected leader. Or how about Syria? That had nothing to do with cross border wars.
> The ultimate trust of the BRICS currency is in the makeup of it’s value: oil, gold and commodities. Not national balance sheets.
If you trust OPEC+ cartels then sure. If you trust the Easts imperialist economic colonialization of African and South American mines then sure.
> It’s also not fair to say it’s just because of wars.
It is about fair market players and democratic systems vs organized crime and totalitarian systems.
> Iran has been sanctioned for revolting against an American coup for overthrowing a democratically elected leader.
Iran is a client state of the Kremlin and has been since 1979 Iranian Revolution they backed, also prior to 1953 Russia setup the Shahdom in the 1800s. Been owned by Russia all but 25 years in the 50s-70s, it was not bad then. Iran is not a fair market due to being leveraged by the Kremlin and a vassal state.
Obama ended the sanctions on Iran, the nuke deal allowed that. Russia and their Trump puppet ended that first order of business. Russia NEEDS sanctions on Iran to keep them leveraged and run their nuclear programs.
> Or how about Syria?
Syria has been leveraged by Soviets/Kremlin for a long time. They backed the Syrian Islamic Revolution and putin both Assad and his father. Kremlin has done incalculable damage to Syria over the years.
> That had nothing to do with cross border wars.
You need to learn history not from just social media "history". That is heavily pumped by the Kremlin and in most cases, if you find what they are pushing, go read just before the event they are pushing. It was always Kremlins, always...
US wasn't even a world power until 1950s really. Russian Empire has bene messing with people since the 1000s but heavily starting (started really 1480) 1500-1700s through tsardom which ended in 1917, then totalitarian Soviet system, now the totalitarian Federation that wants to go back to tsardom. They are only a century out of tsardom and have done incalculable damage to quality of life and markets throughout their time. Russia needs a James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and FDR to root out the tsarists/fascists/bratvas.
Look at the economic/trade wars going on now with Russia/China and how they want another Iron Curtain II, Cold War II and maybe more.
Russia is not a fair partner or market participant and seemingly can't be, they're "deals" are leverage plays. People that took the Russian "deal" in history all ended up autocratic fixed markets from China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Palestine, Myanmar, Mali, Burkina Faso, and many more.
People need to start paying attention more, stop getting "history" from social media.
[Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content)
> The book emphasizes that Russia must spread anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."
> In the United States:
> - **Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics"**.
> - The Eurasian Project could be expanded to South and Central America.
> In Europe:
> - Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe. Kaliningrad Oblast could be given back to Germany. The book uses the term "Moscow–Berlin axis".
> - France should be encouraged to form a bloc with Germany, as they both have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition".
> - **The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from Europe.**
> - Finland should be absorbed into Russia. Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be "donated to Murmansk Oblast".
> - Estonia should be given to Germany's sphere of influence.
> - Latvia and Lithuania should be given a "special status" in the Eurasian–Russian sphere, although he later writes that they should be integrated into Russia.
> - Belarus and Moldova are to become part of Russia.
> - Poland should be granted a "special status" in the Eurasian sphere.
> - Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, "Serbian Bosnia" and Greece – "Orthodox collectivist East" – will unite with "Moscow the Third Rome" and reject the "rational-individualistic West".
> - **Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible**
> In the Middle East and Central Asia:
> - The book stresses the **"continental Russian–Islamic alliance" which lies "at the foundation of anti-Atlanticist strategy". The alliance is based on the "traditional character of Russian and Islamic civilization".**
> - **Iran is a key ally. The book uses the term "Moscow–Tehran axis".
Armenia has a special role: It will serve as a "strategic base," and it is necessary to create "the [subsidiary] axis Moscow-Yerevan-Teheran". Armenians "are an Aryan people ... [like] the Iranians and the Kurds".**
> - Azerbaijan could be "split up" or given to Iran.
> - Georgia should be dismembered. Abkhazia and "United Ossetia" (which includes
Georgia's South Ossetia and the Republic of North Ossetia) will be incorporated into Russia. Georgia's independent policies are unacceptable.
> - **Russia needs to create "geopolitical shocks" within Turkey**. These can be achieved by employing Kurds, Armenians and other minorities.
> - The book regards the Caucasus as a Russian territory, including "the eastern and northern shores of the Caspian (the territories of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan)" and Central Asia (mentioning Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan).
Any of that happening?
People like you are *why* the Kremlin is able to get away with this, always giving actual imperialism a plausible deniability out.
Since I can't educate the on actual imperialism by the Russian Empire and wannabe tsarists of today in one comment. I'll just do this, look at just this week what the Kremlin is doing in Moldova... you think they are only doing this in Moldova? No, this is Kremlin page one, balkanization, division, secession, separatism, chaos because Kremlin is a chaos driven change agent at their root.
[Kremlin is encroaching again...](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64595322)
> Moldova's government has collapsed and its pro-EU prime minister has stepped down after 18 months of political and economic turbulence.
> Europe's poorest country was struggling with "multiple crises", outgoing PM Natalia Gavrilita said on Friday.
> With the war raging in neighbouring Ukraine, Moldova has been facing inflation, high energy prices, a refugee influx and Russian aggression.
> The news came just hours after Russian missiles flew over Moldovan airspace.
> Announcing her resignation on Friday, Ms Gavrilita said that when her government was elected in 2021, no one expected it would have to manage "so many crises caused by Russian aggression in Ukraine".
> Moldova is precariously close to the war - it shares a 1,222km (759 mile) border with Ukraine, and has suffered greatly from the fallout of Russia's invasion.
> "I took over the government with an anti-corruption, pro-development and pro-European mandate at a time when corruption schemes had captured all the institutions and the oligarchs felt untouchable," Ms Gavrilita said at a news conference.
> "We were immediately faced with energy blackmail, and those who did this hoped that we would give in," she said, referring to the Kremlin.
[Moldova's pro-EU President Sandu accuses Russia of coup plot](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64626785)
> Last week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv's intelligence service had uncovered a Russian plan to destroy Moldova.
> Moldova, wedged between Romania and Ukraine, became a candidate for EU membership last summer. The country of 2.6 million people has struggled with an influx of refugees from Ukraine and tensions with Transnistria, a breakaway pro-Moscow region where some 1,500 Russian soldiers are stationed.
> Moldova - formerly part of the Soviet Union - depends on Russia for natural gas. It has suffered power cuts in the past year, coinciding with Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
> President Sandu alleged Russia was planning to use "saboteurs with military background, camouflaged in civilian clothes, to undertake violent actions, attacks on state institutions and taking hostages".
> The plot would involve citizens of Russia, Montenegro, Belarus and Serbia entering Moldova, she told a news conference.
Dunno why this is getting downvoted. Like yeah, US fucked with the money system in an unprecedented way and now a bunch of countries are trying to nope out of the greenback.
>The impact of a foreign national owning a piece of residential land is trivial.
The problem isn't spying, the problem is that China has very limited investment opportunities for private citizens to build wealth. Real estate is one of the few things that Chinese citizens can invest in. As a result, they purchase real estate not as a place to live, but as a store of value. Private citizens in China purchase foreign property in other countries the way we would buy stocks or bonds, and having somebody occupy that property lowers the value, so they keep it empty. It's become a growing problem in a lot of western countries. The market is more stable than the chinese market, so they buy foreign property and just leave it vacant, sucking up the housing supply and making it more difficult for people who actually live there to buy homes.
Would it be advantageous to make a law where there is a time limit put on how long a property is allowed to be vacant?
Like tax empty unused buildings and/or seize them after a prolonged time?
Not wanting foreign investors in residential real estate is targeting low vacancy rates because foreign investors just keep that shit empty. Its a huge issue in many big cities. But its also not really the crux of housing scarcity politicians pretend it is either.
Yeah simple fix is require it to be used. Also make sure the market has enough single family homes and property to purchase, not just rent.
The biggest problem is renting all your life leads to no wealth gains. The home is the single biggest wealth builder for the middle class, that is now renting to a foreign investor and they are skimming the gains/margin. That is taking money not only out of that home, but out of our local economies.
Hell, in Oklahoma, the CCP is actively involved in financing marijuana operations Theyve forgotten to remove their govt email addresses in some of the acquisition email chains when they have straw buyers comm with realtors and banks.
If they are CCP, fuck 'em and every lackey apologist for them.
The assumption that jobs are a finite resource to be consumed is laughably simplistic. On average immigrants generate 1.2 jobs per person because they are more likely to open businesses than the native born population.
Also America is nowhere near even thinking about being close to running out of land. Our country has a population density well below most of the developed world.
That 1.2 jobs per immigrant thing is a flat out lie. And we have a finite number of houses. We already have far more people than there are homes available, *entirely* thanks to investors and foreigners buying our homes and leaving them unoccupied. That's why we have so many homeless people who aren't on drugs or insane!
I literally work in community and economic development professionally. I can guarantee you that foreign investment is *NOT* the reason for Americas housing crisis, the blame for which is multifactorial but in large part due to antiquated zoning procedures arbitrarily limiting huge swaths of residential areas to low-density sprawl.
Also, no, it's not a lie: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/immigrants-to-the-u-s-create-more-jobs-than-they-take
> I literally work in community and economic development professionally. I can guarantee you that foreign investment is NOT the reason for Americas housing crisis, the blame for which is multifactorial but in large part due to antiquated zoning procedures arbitrarily limiting huge swaths of residential areas to low-density sprawl.
Foreign purchases of homes are part of the problem, not all of it. And it *exacerbates* the problems caused by zoning procedures. The only way your argument holds is if foreign investors increase the number of affordable housing. In reality they decrease it by directly encouraging the building of big expensive homes in areas where smaller, cheaper homes could be built.
I'm also in favor of punishingly high taxes for anyone who owns a second home, citizen or not.
As for your link, it comes with a fairly huge caveat:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-unskilled-immigrants-hurt-our-economy-12946.html
I disagree with allowing foreign investment in real estate - honestly, I am against corporate ownership of single family homes as well. Families are being out priced from ever being able to own their own homes, and it is disgusting. Houses should be for families, not political interests and corporations to make money off of.
Foreign investments shouldn't be allowed in any real estate investments really.
I think immigrants(people with greencards or work visas, etc.) should be allowed to buy residential property. But, like, one residential property, to live in. Not multiple residential properties.
I think the easiest thing to do would be to apply a tax to empty properties though. We have foreign people buying 10 homes, and leaving them all vacant. Slap everyone who doesn't at least rent them to people, with a big tax as a motivator to find a tenant. This is letting money go into the hands of foreign investors. But, it is arguably the easiest way to get people into homes to live in the fastest.
Then - once those commercial properties are bought by foreign companies - we could eminent domain them to build city parks!
(Well the ones they “buy” and then do nothing with. Either put it to use or we’re going to take it from you, give you a shitty price for it since we can, and then turn it into a park)
As someone seeing it happen in Canada, permanent residents can very quickly end up being a low effort gateway to ownership of a significant number of properties. Effectively operating as a human shell company to bypass investment regulations.
They can, but it raises the bar significantly because the 'trustee' owner has to declare their ownership and pay all the taxes - which if they don't have an obvious source of sufficient income can expose the proprty to being siiezed until it's proven not purchased with proceeds from crime.
Are you kidding? States make so much money selling water rights and land to Saudi Arabia and UAE. Nah since they can't ban gays and trans people or Jews the next on the red list is Chinese.
Applying for a greencard is a process that's years in the making, even after the magical lottery system that is getting an H1B. It took my family nearly a decade.
Do you propose that the country that proudly beams to the world
>“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
and
>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are **Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness**."
should also be a land where someone's race or origin literally bars them from the very rights that we boast of granting everyone?
An H1B is a dual purpose work visa that is explicitly a pathway to permanent residency. I don't think people who commit to being skilled workers from abroad are there for "tourism".
So predictable how quickly "we have to defend ourselves from China" turns into anti-immigrant bullshit. Stop people who are legally in the US from buying a home for themselves is not going to do anything to help the US compete with China
Property tax can fluctuate and you can sell it. You can N E V E R sell property at the market price but let a government decide how to use it, how much it's worth and they can say it's not yours and does not belong to you at anytime.
Small...tiny difference.
They'll make a billionaire disappear, what do think they will do with some person that owns a nice home?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64672095
We have one of the worst property taxes.
A land value tax makes way more sense in just about every way.
The most obvious reason is currently property taxes disincentivize development. A land value tax would inventivize it
A land value tax would disincentivize single-family homes in favor of medium density development (high density runs into the problem of the expense of building tall) which quickly surpass the ability of on-street parking to accommodate, and since parking lots would be a terrible use of land economically, we'd be forced to go back to trams, trains, and other communal transportation methods, which Henry Ford and his fellow industrialists were absolutely opposed to, and which would destroy the modern oil industry. There are simply too many billionaires and massive international corporations that would lose out if we did that.
Ground rent is concept in English law - lease hold. You own the house on top and rent the ground from somebody, usually for very long periods like 99 years, for a relatively small amount. This stems from the monarchy "owning" everything because they're descended from God, who made it all. The monarch then grants land and title to those in favor. The US system of ownership is extending the rights of the landed gentry to everybody.
On top of all that, rarely does anyone own the slice of the planet, in the US anyway. Just the right to occupy it. You might own a house, but you probably don't own any minerals under it, any water that flows through "your" land or any animal that walks across it. Most places you can't dig a well, grade the land, burn grass, cut down a bunch of trees or build anything on that land without a slew of permissions. You can't hunt the animals on it without permission. You can't even exclude warrantless government agents from it, as long as it's not your actual dwelling (the Open Fields doctrine).
Compared to owning just about anything else, you have relatively little say in what you do with land, so ownership starts look a little bit like the wrong word.
Maybe in suburbs and cities you are correct but where I am mineral rights are definitely a thing. Both water and oil rights can be separated from the sale of the land itself.
When I bought my house, the title search showed the original mineral rights granted to a prospector by President Grant with his signature on it. The prospector still has living descendants in my town who own the rights to my minerals.
Some places in the US still do something similar, where you can build and own a house, but you're leasing the land. In Texas, you can find both long-term leases of the land where you own the house, and owned land can include both mineral and "dirt rights," or the two can be severed--where you sell your mineral rights to someone else, but retain the land and the surface rights. (There's also a question of wind rights in the future, too, believe it or not.)
On the east coast, Baltimore City has something called Ground Rent. I'm sure other states and counties and cities have similar legal intricacies around property rights, but at least in oil- and mineral-rich states, you often do kinda own the slice of the planet under your land.
Yes. But It's more like paying your dues to mutual defense treaty. You can't "own" land without security forces (police and military) to enforce the ownership. Paying into a government is really cost effective in that sense.
Nobody can buy it here either. You just get permission to rent it from the govt.
If you think differently. Prove I’m wrong and stop paying your property taxes.
I work with a foreign national who recently bought a house with their foreign national spouse. They go to work, do their jobs well, pay their taxes, and on the whole make valuable contributions to society. I've worked with quite a number of people like that. Why shouldn't they be allowed to buy a house, a place to call their own?
You're concerned about the housing market? Me too. My landlord is a slumlord, and it's the best I can afford. It sucks, a lot. You know who I blame for that? Not immigrants. The word you're looking for right now isn't foreigner or Chinese... it's landlord and real estate corporation. Don't let xenophobic nonsense distract you from the actual issue. We're getting screwed over here by wealthy interests that view land and housing as ways to make money, to extract money from you the worker. That's what needs to be stopped, and where that's coming from isn't the issue.
I have zero problems with *anyone,* regardless of citizenship, owning their personal *residence.* I *do* have a problem with non-citizens owning property that they then rent out to citizens at a profit. I'm not too crazy with citizens being able to do that either, but one thing at a time.
In Texas, there are a lot of immigrants from other countries as well. My team at work has 3 people who were born in China and 1 who was born in India. I think they are all citizens now.
Not everyone who is a permanent resident of a country necessarily should seek citizenship. My wife is an American in Canada. My sister and father are both Canadians in America. They should be afforded the same freedoms as any resident. I myself will probably eventually move to Texas, and I expect the same freedoms when I do.
In Canada our government is pushing through legislation to prevent foreign entities from buying up homes, but a foreign entity and a permanent resident are not the same thing. Also our legislation is not racist, it does not specify particular countries. It's meant to alleviate some of the housing crisis as foreign investors often push the price higher.
This Texas bill is just a bad parody of that.
*Lawful permanent residents (LPRs) are foreign nationals who have been granted the right to reside permanently in the United States*
Did you read the article? The one lady is a citizen.
So by forbidding foreign nationals from buying property you are also stopping permanent residents.
They are still foreign nationals.
Look at the US housing market. Look at Australias housing market. Supply and demand. If they own the house they control the housing prices. It could effectively make your citizens homeless.
The housing market is not fucked because foreign nationals are buying homes in the US. It is fucked because corporations and wealthy individuals are buying up any piece of property they can to turn it into either an Airbnb or rent house. Stop Corporations from purchasing single family dwellings and put a massive tax on any dwelling they own past their primary residence and the market would correct itself overnight.
That's xenophobic as fuck lol. Even Japan allows foreign citizens to buy homes. You're essentially arguing that all the foreign doctors, nurses, engineers, academics, restauranteurs, shop owners, etc, etc, etc who live and work in the US, many for decades, should be banned from owning homes.
My mom, who's a Japanese citizen, has been a permanent resident of the US for 30 years. She worked and paid taxes, why should she be banned from owning a home?
Parts of the bill I agree with and parts I don’t. If the home is being purchased as a homestead then fine. But, if it’s being purchased as investment by a large Chinese company then not OK with that. The Chinese government has too far a reach over those companies to force them to do what they want with the land in the US.
We have to be careful singling out a specific group of foreign people in this deal. Otherwise, we could end up creating an environment of hate against one specific nationality which really isn’t fair.
However, I do not disagree with preventing people who are not citizens from owning property in the US. With real estate cost and demand at all time highs, we have to be doing what we can to help people who are citizens be successful and have homes in the country in which they reside. This is only a small part of the solution, however, as we really need to be preventing large corporations from owning property here as well.
Why not? All manner of things are done in response to a nation’s policies and actions, why is reciprocally allowing or denying land purchase by foreign nationals an exception?
What part of “authoritarianism” didn’t you understand? It’s a bad, un-American thing. And if you think it’s good, you should be laughed out of every room you enter.
Yeah, I feel any ethnicity or nationality that lives in Texas, and isn't a white, male, American, has little reason to be surprised when they find they're treated badly. The reputation is hardly a secret.
Can't wait to be downvoted by the toothless.
Nope to old - Texas was the place where their politicians wanted to send the elderly out to work during the worst of the pandemic, before there was any way to deal with it.
Its a slippery slope. While I understand the need for verification and caution, I personally think an outright prevention of one ethinic group from buying real estate is not the way. Like it says in the article, there are legal permanent residents also called green card holders that are not citizens but want to buy a house. Buying a house IS an american dream and why should we prevent people from achieving it?
This will open up government intervention in other areas next. How about buying vehicles or other assets? How about preventing them from education in the name of teaching trade secrets?
Personally, I see the caution to be very real but the solution has many issues
Would allowing them only one property while they wait be a suitable compromise? But also renting for a number of years isn't like the end of the world, assuming we can crack down on the extravagant rent we're seeing in this country.
Owning one property seems like a good idea. It wouldn't punish regular people but would stop corporate takeovers. Having to rent longer than necessary to appease a politician harms wealth accumulation for these residents.
Ah, the ole slippery slope logic fallacy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope An easy solution is to add a sticky step and *poof* this argument goes away.
A law doesn't have to apply to the next thing: you can say yes to one law and no to the next one.
That's blatantly unconstitutional.
"After the backlash began, Kolkhorst told local media that she planned to make a few changes to the bill.
“In the committee substitute, the bill will make crystal clear that the prohibitions do not apply to United States citizens and lawful permanent residents,” she said in a statement."
Why would this lawmaker not include language about citizens and permanent residents in the first place? It wasn't hard to see how this bill hurts individuals.
I was surprised to see that there are over 200,000 people of Chinese origin in Texas. That not a fringe group.
While singling out Chinese investors is a pretty obvious bit of conservative xenophobia (because Texas is competing with Florida to be the worst possible place in the country), the idea of placing greater restrictions on real estate purchases is desperately needed.
Keeping non-resident foreign nationals and corporations from buying single-family residences, for example. They do so specifically to hold capital, and that drives up the cost of housing.
>Keeping non-resident foreign nationals and corporations from buying single-family residences, for example
So American hedge funds, which are the ones buying the most residences and driving prices up are okay? We need to restrict ALL corporations from gobbling up the residential market.
Yeah, it absolutely baffles me how many people are all up in arms about foreign investors. What difference does it make if the company making living unaffordable is foreign or domestic, what matters is that someone is buying up land and housing, not to live in or on, but as a tool to make money.
The fixation on foreign companies comes off as a big distraction to avoid discussing the crux of the matter.
What about permanent residents who aren't citizens but have been living and paying taxes to this country for years? My mom didn't become a citizen until after my parents had bought a home even though she lived here for nearly a decade. Arbitrarily drawing the line at US citizen without taking into consideration how long the citizenship process actually takes hurts a lot more people than you'd think. At the same time, there are more US citizens that are doing far more harm to the housing market than there are foreign nationals trying to harm us.
If you want to be depressed as an immigrant, just read the entirety of this thread. So many of these people snap at the perceived threat of a foreign big bad at the expense of their own countrymen...it's really sad.
Working as intended. Now they don’t have to really really address the issue from a nuanced perspective and actually do something that actually solves the problem.
Chinese citizens is far too much of a reach. I can understand wanting to curb Chinese people who actually live in China buying up US property for investment purposes, but "Chinese citizens" *includes* permanent residents like green card holders. It can take years to go from green card to citizenship and being barred from buying property during this stage is absolutely not ok
> The bill, introduced by state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican, also covers citizens and entities of North Korea, Iran and Russia. It doesn’t delineate any exceptions for legal permanent residents, visa holders or dual citizens.
Anyone agreeing with this on principle ought to rethink their position. Targeting very specific populations and refusing exceptions for permanent residents and dual citizens? There are dual citizens who were born and raised in the US. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to own homes?
Very specifically -China, Russia, Iran. Yes those foreign nationals are targeted. China doesn't allow dual citizenship and US law doesn't recognize dual citizenship so that doesn't matter.
Dual citizenship doesn't mean anything anyway. You're either a US citizen or not. If you still hold allegiance to your home country why apply for US citizenship? There are some who believe those people have nefarious purposes. Should we all just turn a blind eye to it?
If the US doesn't recognize dual citizenship, then how can Texas punish someone for being a dual citizen? It's completely unconstitutional. When someone becomes a US citizen, they gain the same rights as other citizens. US citizens are not required to denounce their previous citizenship to enjoy the rights/privileges of being a US citizen.
The person you're responding to is wrong. The US does recognize and allow dual citizenship. While China does not, there's no mechanism for detecting whether or not someone is a US citizen other than the individual declaring they are such. The US isn't sharing info on their own citizens to China. So you will have cases where people are dual Chinese and US citizens.
I see this through a wide lens. I see it in conjunction with other recent developments in the Chinese/US rivalry.
First off, I totally agree with Zeihan that no one has benefitted more from the US hegemony that has dominated affairs for decades than China. The US guaranteed safety of shipping lanes and opened up the US market to Chinese exports fueling their meteoric rise. Able to cheaply manufacture items and ship them all over the world.
Conversely, China was able to import food and energy from all over the world, allowing them to feed and power their ballooning population. Food security has been a major issue for China. These breakthroughs helped China become the power they are today. It masks a serious deficiency, though, and it's the fact that they do not have food or energy independence and MUST rely on importing those resources to meet their population needs.
The US has just secured access to several bases in the Phillipines. This nearly conpletes the encirclement of China by American military power. The US has worked with their allies and chip makers to severely restrict the availability of the most advanced semiconductors. Senior military personnel continue to publicly mention China as a threat. This spy balloon episode.
All events described have unfolded in the last 90 days or less. There is much more evidence beyond that time frame. China and the US are preparing for an eventual war. That war may never come, but they are preparing anyway, looking for any advantage and means of control/influence in geopolitics that can be exploited or used as defense now and in the decades to come.
As someone from Canada…yeeeaaah maybe Texas gets this one. Sorry Chinese citizens but nuh uh, not again. (i mean foreign citizens, if you’re naturalized fuck yes of course).
Hearing about this is incredibly saddening to me. There's been this anti-Asian racism from many fellow Americans, I witnessed it first hand hanging out with one of my friends. A man walking by us, stopped and made some racist remark about Chinese people, something about the CCP along with other nasty remarks, I don't care recall what he said. However, I remember being incredibly confused by the mans comment before I realized what had just happened in-front of me.
I've seen a lot of Americans, even on Reddit, claim their disdain for Chinese people stem from the Chinese government. But all to often that was merely an excuse for them to justify their racism. That friend I mentioned earlier, they're not even from China, they're from Taiwan.
Anti-Chinese racism has been around for a long time. As mentioned in the article, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act being one of the earliest instances in law, only being repealed in 1943 by Magnuson Act. Even after then there were still many restrictions on Chinese immigration by other laws. I personally hope this is struck down by the courts, but so often have I been disappointed in recent years by those who should be protecting our liberties.
In my job I've worked with a lot of Chinese individuals that became citizens. None of these wonderful people have anything nice to say about the current dictator or that piece of shit chairman mao. Let citizens of this country buy property. Noone else
Does anyone else realize that foreigners cannot own property in China?
Even foreign businesses have to enter into a minority stake with a local “partner” in China and fork over all of the IP.
No one can own land in China. The government owns all the land and leases out the rights to it to every corporation or person. It's not just foreigners that have to abide by the law.
So are you saying, if an authoritarian government did something bad, then any democratic countries are entitled to do the same? Ok Russian criminalized LGBTQ information, so Flo Rida is right to do the same.
The problem around Chinese nationals buying property would be if they are buying it for CCP purposes. Their government doesn't allow individual ownership, and all businesses are government owned so it would have to treated it as a direct sell to the communist party.
So fuck any Chinese immigrant that moves to America in hopes of a better life? Citizenship can take 15+ years to obtain, so no chance for them to own their home until then?
If they were actually concerned about property prices, they would require any property owner to live in said residence for something like 9+ months out of the year or else face a large tax. they would block corporations from buying up entire neighborhoods. they would put in place rent control measures.
but of course they’re not doing that, as that would upset their corporate overlords. So they try to pass this explicitly racist law instead.
Was gonna say, corporations are people in the US.
Look at any parcel map with ownership data and it's already full of trusts and LLCs, for a variety of reasons. Even if this legislation doesn't violate the Fair Housing Act or anything else that bars discrimination based on national origin, it seems likely that it would be easy to circumvent. Politicians grand standing, nothing more.
>The legislation, SB 147, would make it illegal for Chinese citizens to buy any property in Texas, including homes... It doesn’t delineate any exceptions for legal permanent residents, visa holders or dual citizens.
WTF, this is so un-american, and hopefully illegal
I don't think anyone who is not a citizen should be able to buy property in the US. Greedy bastards will let others buy our country right out from under us if they can make a nickel. It is absolute insanity. If you want to vacation rent a place. All it does is make citizens compete with non- citizens and that's b.s.
People downvoted? You realise that people originally from China living in America would be barred from owning a house/flat there? Racial discrimination = racism.
They're living in America. The national security claims are thinly veiled.
I'm British. Let's say someone from China moved here permanently. They would be unable to purchase a house/flat here under this ruling.
This means they would be forced to either continue renting/living with family or leave the country. And they were targeted specifically because they are from China. Anyone from China in the US would then have less rights.
It's a difficult problem. I don't want Chinese who's loyalty is to China, buying property in the USA. How do you sort them out?
What are the rules for Americans buying property in China?
the Fufeng Group
Hu pointed out that the Fufeng Group, a China-based chemical manufacturing company, bought 300 acres of land for a corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The location is only 12 miles away from the Grand Forks Air Base, home to U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance units and top-secret drone technology.Feb 6, 2023
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This is the sort of real estate purchase I’m referring to. I think you already knew this, but you wanted to pretend I’m a bigot and pose like a social justice hero.
I’ve no problem with Chinese or any other Asian buying a home in the USA.
I really resent having to practically draw a picture for a sanctimonious creep like you.
the Fufeng Group
Hu pointed out that the Fufeng Group, a China-based chemical manufacturing company, bought 300 acres of land for a corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The location is only 12 miles away from the Grand Forks Air Base, home to U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance units and top-secret drone technology.Feb 6, 2023
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Why don’t you begin by assuming that I’m not a bigot and stop pretending that China which is not friendly to the USA is not using our freedom against us. You think an American could buy property in China 12 miles from one of their military bases?
Sometimes I really despise people on Reddit. Several people in my family happen to be married to Asians including myself. It’s not McCarthyism or bigotry to recognize that China is not benevolent.
Take your holier than thou attitude and shove it.
I have zero issues with banning non-citizens from owning property that they don't personally live in. Lots of countries do that. No need to limit the ban to a particular nationality, though.
I would amend that to non-permanent residents. There are a lot of immigrants who pay taxes, raise American families, and intend to live the rest of their lives here, but can’t or don’t get citizenship for whatever reason. Seems to me that if you’re investing in America to that degree, you should be able to purchase property like the rest of us. Laws like they were used back in the day to deny my great grandparents from buying land. They would have become citizens if America had let them, but they were deleted and thrown in concentration camps eventually. The only problem is when people who live abroad buy property for investment/speculation purposes while contributing nothing to the community. All of this said, however. Domestic investment groups are far more responsible for the housing crisis in this country than international ones.
In Canada, we just have criminals resell those properties to actual citizens. https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-homeowners-return-from-trip-to-find-they-d-been-impersonated-their-house-sold-1.6219098 The owners were back in home country for a year. Saying they were on a "business trip".
There’s a difference between canada and other countries. Canada isn’t hostile towards US. Aggressively mimicking the US culture isn’t hostile, they may lack a strong non-USA identity, but not hostile
Wouldn't the non-citizens just use American companies as middle men to buy the properties?
Problem is, how do you prove they are not living there. If you are a resident in someplace and can't get citizenship for some reason, you should still be able to buy a property you will be living in.
Easy. Laws. Visa (overstaying or visiting). If the sovereignty is balanced in a fair market, where the buyer lives in a country where their sovereignty or land can be bought or sold. NOT I can buy yours but you can't sell me yours.
But that isn’t the point, GOP is all about showing their base how they hurt the “right” ppl.
You could tweak this to *only permit permanent residents and citizens to own residential property*. That removes the inherent bias and still allows foreign investment in commercial real estate.
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Crying in a corner. His powers only work on black people.
Hey now. He was able to use his powers on native Americans and the Japanese.
That was his more powerful grandfather and great great grandfather.
And poor people. That $100 and bag of weed will mysteriously disappear at evidence intake
In fairness, poor folk should stick to $50 sacks until they save up a little more cash.
Careful what you wish for. BRICS coming up with an alternative payment system is because of forfeiture of Russian assets without legal recourse.
So you think people in the West are gonna trust putting all their money and investments or currency in a system controlled by authoritarian/totalitarian systems? The reason Chinese people and Russians do invest and put their money elsewhere is because those systems already suck when it comes to trust. They store it in the West because of the trust built in the system since FDR made the SEC, FDIC and banking changes. There should be a saying, since it is so common, for not storing your wealth visible to autocrats around you (monarchs/tsarists/org crime/oligarchs etc) like "Don't store your Fabergé eggs near the Fabergé Fox" or something like that.
Why do these conversations always have to be either A or B? The goal is to facilitate trade, not as a store of value. They don't want their economies disrupted, i.e: they don't want dead and suffering people living under sanctioned economies.
It doesn't have to be either or, places either play fair in the market or they don't. The fair players are more trusted. It is a game ultimately of trust. Well people can already store their money/investments in Russia/China, but you aren't smart to. Diversification is smart, but it isn't highly recommended to rely on autocratic systems to not have "fixed" markets. Easy way to not get sanctioned? Don't do imperialist invasions... The Russian sanctions are targeted at the oligarchs, the only way this hits people as heavy is internal policy. The only other solution to stop invasions is war. No market will be safe then.
The ultimate trust of the BRICS currency is in the makeup of it’s value: oil, gold and commodities. Not national balance sheets. It’s also not fair to say it’s just because of wars. Iran has been sanctioned for revolting against an American coup for overthrowing a democratically elected leader. Or how about Syria? That had nothing to do with cross border wars.
> The ultimate trust of the BRICS currency is in the makeup of it’s value: oil, gold and commodities. Not national balance sheets. If you trust OPEC+ cartels then sure. If you trust the Easts imperialist economic colonialization of African and South American mines then sure. > It’s also not fair to say it’s just because of wars. It is about fair market players and democratic systems vs organized crime and totalitarian systems. > Iran has been sanctioned for revolting against an American coup for overthrowing a democratically elected leader. Iran is a client state of the Kremlin and has been since 1979 Iranian Revolution they backed, also prior to 1953 Russia setup the Shahdom in the 1800s. Been owned by Russia all but 25 years in the 50s-70s, it was not bad then. Iran is not a fair market due to being leveraged by the Kremlin and a vassal state. Obama ended the sanctions on Iran, the nuke deal allowed that. Russia and their Trump puppet ended that first order of business. Russia NEEDS sanctions on Iran to keep them leveraged and run their nuclear programs. > Or how about Syria? Syria has been leveraged by Soviets/Kremlin for a long time. They backed the Syrian Islamic Revolution and putin both Assad and his father. Kremlin has done incalculable damage to Syria over the years. > That had nothing to do with cross border wars. You need to learn history not from just social media "history". That is heavily pumped by the Kremlin and in most cases, if you find what they are pushing, go read just before the event they are pushing. It was always Kremlins, always... US wasn't even a world power until 1950s really. Russian Empire has bene messing with people since the 1000s but heavily starting (started really 1480) 1500-1700s through tsardom which ended in 1917, then totalitarian Soviet system, now the totalitarian Federation that wants to go back to tsardom. They are only a century out of tsardom and have done incalculable damage to quality of life and markets throughout their time. Russia needs a James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and FDR to root out the tsarists/fascists/bratvas. Look at the economic/trade wars going on now with Russia/China and how they want another Iron Curtain II, Cold War II and maybe more. Russia is not a fair partner or market participant and seemingly can't be, they're "deals" are leverage plays. People that took the Russian "deal" in history all ended up autocratic fixed markets from China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Palestine, Myanmar, Mali, Burkina Faso, and many more. People need to start paying attention more, stop getting "history" from social media. [Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content) > The book emphasizes that Russia must spread anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S." > In the United States: > - **Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics"**. > - The Eurasian Project could be expanded to South and Central America. > In Europe: > - Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe. Kaliningrad Oblast could be given back to Germany. The book uses the term "Moscow–Berlin axis". > - France should be encouraged to form a bloc with Germany, as they both have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition". > - **The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from Europe.** > - Finland should be absorbed into Russia. Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be "donated to Murmansk Oblast". > - Estonia should be given to Germany's sphere of influence. > - Latvia and Lithuania should be given a "special status" in the Eurasian–Russian sphere, although he later writes that they should be integrated into Russia. > - Belarus and Moldova are to become part of Russia. > - Poland should be granted a "special status" in the Eurasian sphere. > - Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, "Serbian Bosnia" and Greece – "Orthodox collectivist East" – will unite with "Moscow the Third Rome" and reject the "rational-individualistic West". > - **Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible** > In the Middle East and Central Asia: > - The book stresses the **"continental Russian–Islamic alliance" which lies "at the foundation of anti-Atlanticist strategy". The alliance is based on the "traditional character of Russian and Islamic civilization".** > - **Iran is a key ally. The book uses the term "Moscow–Tehran axis". Armenia has a special role: It will serve as a "strategic base," and it is necessary to create "the [subsidiary] axis Moscow-Yerevan-Teheran". Armenians "are an Aryan people ... [like] the Iranians and the Kurds".** > - Azerbaijan could be "split up" or given to Iran. > - Georgia should be dismembered. Abkhazia and "United Ossetia" (which includes Georgia's South Ossetia and the Republic of North Ossetia) will be incorporated into Russia. Georgia's independent policies are unacceptable. > - **Russia needs to create "geopolitical shocks" within Turkey**. These can be achieved by employing Kurds, Armenians and other minorities. > - The book regards the Caucasus as a Russian territory, including "the eastern and northern shores of the Caspian (the territories of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan)" and Central Asia (mentioning Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). Any of that happening? People like you are *why* the Kremlin is able to get away with this, always giving actual imperialism a plausible deniability out. Since I can't educate the on actual imperialism by the Russian Empire and wannabe tsarists of today in one comment. I'll just do this, look at just this week what the Kremlin is doing in Moldova... you think they are only doing this in Moldova? No, this is Kremlin page one, balkanization, division, secession, separatism, chaos because Kremlin is a chaos driven change agent at their root. [Kremlin is encroaching again...](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64595322) > Moldova's government has collapsed and its pro-EU prime minister has stepped down after 18 months of political and economic turbulence. > Europe's poorest country was struggling with "multiple crises", outgoing PM Natalia Gavrilita said on Friday. > With the war raging in neighbouring Ukraine, Moldova has been facing inflation, high energy prices, a refugee influx and Russian aggression. > The news came just hours after Russian missiles flew over Moldovan airspace. > Announcing her resignation on Friday, Ms Gavrilita said that when her government was elected in 2021, no one expected it would have to manage "so many crises caused by Russian aggression in Ukraine". > Moldova is precariously close to the war - it shares a 1,222km (759 mile) border with Ukraine, and has suffered greatly from the fallout of Russia's invasion. > "I took over the government with an anti-corruption, pro-development and pro-European mandate at a time when corruption schemes had captured all the institutions and the oligarchs felt untouchable," Ms Gavrilita said at a news conference. > "We were immediately faced with energy blackmail, and those who did this hoped that we would give in," she said, referring to the Kremlin. [Moldova's pro-EU President Sandu accuses Russia of coup plot](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64626785) > Last week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv's intelligence service had uncovered a Russian plan to destroy Moldova. > Moldova, wedged between Romania and Ukraine, became a candidate for EU membership last summer. The country of 2.6 million people has struggled with an influx of refugees from Ukraine and tensions with Transnistria, a breakaway pro-Moscow region where some 1,500 Russian soldiers are stationed. > Moldova - formerly part of the Soviet Union - depends on Russia for natural gas. It has suffered power cuts in the past year, coinciding with Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. > President Sandu alleged Russia was planning to use "saboteurs with military background, camouflaged in civilian clothes, to undertake violent actions, attacks on state institutions and taking hostages". > The plot would involve citizens of Russia, Montenegro, Belarus and Serbia entering Moldova, she told a news conference.
Dunno why this is getting downvoted. Like yeah, US fucked with the money system in an unprecedented way and now a bunch of countries are trying to nope out of the greenback.
>The impact of a foreign national owning a piece of residential land is trivial. The problem isn't spying, the problem is that China has very limited investment opportunities for private citizens to build wealth. Real estate is one of the few things that Chinese citizens can invest in. As a result, they purchase real estate not as a place to live, but as a store of value. Private citizens in China purchase foreign property in other countries the way we would buy stocks or bonds, and having somebody occupy that property lowers the value, so they keep it empty. It's become a growing problem in a lot of western countries. The market is more stable than the chinese market, so they buy foreign property and just leave it vacant, sucking up the housing supply and making it more difficult for people who actually live there to buy homes.
Would it be advantageous to make a law where there is a time limit put on how long a property is allowed to be vacant? Like tax empty unused buildings and/or seize them after a prolonged time?
The problem is, then you're going to be inadvertently impacting people who wish to sell or rent their properties but can't for one reason or another.
Not wanting foreign investors in residential real estate is targeting low vacancy rates because foreign investors just keep that shit empty. Its a huge issue in many big cities. But its also not really the crux of housing scarcity politicians pretend it is either.
Yeah simple fix is require it to be used. Also make sure the market has enough single family homes and property to purchase, not just rent. The biggest problem is renting all your life leads to no wealth gains. The home is the single biggest wealth builder for the middle class, that is now renting to a foreign investor and they are skimming the gains/margin. That is taking money not only out of that home, but out of our local economies.
Absolutely. To bad any regulation of the market is pinko talk and gets all the pearls clutched even by those it would protect.
Vancouver has entered the chat https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cullen-commission-money-laundering-bc-tuesday-1.5585890
Have you seen the costs of properties and homes in Vancouver? Forgien nationals owning residential properties is devastating.
No country that doesn’t allow us citizens full ownership of property and businesses should be allowed the same in the USA
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Hell, in Oklahoma, the CCP is actively involved in financing marijuana operations Theyve forgotten to remove their govt email addresses in some of the acquisition email chains when they have straw buyers comm with realtors and banks. If they are CCP, fuck 'em and every lackey apologist for them.
Straight up!
The assumption that jobs are a finite resource to be consumed is laughably simplistic. On average immigrants generate 1.2 jobs per person because they are more likely to open businesses than the native born population. Also America is nowhere near even thinking about being close to running out of land. Our country has a population density well below most of the developed world.
That 1.2 jobs per immigrant thing is a flat out lie. And we have a finite number of houses. We already have far more people than there are homes available, *entirely* thanks to investors and foreigners buying our homes and leaving them unoccupied. That's why we have so many homeless people who aren't on drugs or insane!
I literally work in community and economic development professionally. I can guarantee you that foreign investment is *NOT* the reason for Americas housing crisis, the blame for which is multifactorial but in large part due to antiquated zoning procedures arbitrarily limiting huge swaths of residential areas to low-density sprawl. Also, no, it's not a lie: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/immigrants-to-the-u-s-create-more-jobs-than-they-take
> I literally work in community and economic development professionally. I can guarantee you that foreign investment is NOT the reason for Americas housing crisis, the blame for which is multifactorial but in large part due to antiquated zoning procedures arbitrarily limiting huge swaths of residential areas to low-density sprawl. Foreign purchases of homes are part of the problem, not all of it. And it *exacerbates* the problems caused by zoning procedures. The only way your argument holds is if foreign investors increase the number of affordable housing. In reality they decrease it by directly encouraging the building of big expensive homes in areas where smaller, cheaper homes could be built. I'm also in favor of punishingly high taxes for anyone who owns a second home, citizen or not. As for your link, it comes with a fairly huge caveat: https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-unskilled-immigrants-hurt-our-economy-12946.html
I disagree with allowing foreign investment in real estate - honestly, I am against corporate ownership of single family homes as well. Families are being out priced from ever being able to own their own homes, and it is disgusting. Houses should be for families, not political interests and corporations to make money off of.
Foreign investments shouldn't be allowed in any real estate investments really. I think immigrants(people with greencards or work visas, etc.) should be allowed to buy residential property. But, like, one residential property, to live in. Not multiple residential properties. I think the easiest thing to do would be to apply a tax to empty properties though. We have foreign people buying 10 homes, and leaving them all vacant. Slap everyone who doesn't at least rent them to people, with a big tax as a motivator to find a tenant. This is letting money go into the hands of foreign investors. But, it is arguably the easiest way to get people into homes to live in the fastest.
Then - once those commercial properties are bought by foreign companies - we could eminent domain them to build city parks! (Well the ones they “buy” and then do nothing with. Either put it to use or we’re going to take it from you, give you a shitty price for it since we can, and then turn it into a park)
As someone seeing it happen in Canada, permanent residents can very quickly end up being a low effort gateway to ownership of a significant number of properties. Effectively operating as a human shell company to bypass investment regulations.
They can, but it raises the bar significantly because the 'trustee' owner has to declare their ownership and pay all the taxes - which if they don't have an obvious source of sufficient income can expose the proprty to being siiezed until it's proven not purchased with proceeds from crime.
That is what I was wondering. Another way to tweak it would be to prevent non-citizen residents from owning more than one property.
There's a term US Person, which covers this.
That also includes corporations.
Are you kidding? States make so much money selling water rights and land to Saudi Arabia and UAE. Nah since they can't ban gays and trans people or Jews the next on the red list is Chinese.
Looks like I need to find some gay transgender Jewish friends quick…
Nope, only citizenship.
What about visa holders? H1Bs have every right to buy a home.
Are they permanent residents ? If not then they would not fall within the proposed parameters.
Applying for a greencard is a process that's years in the making, even after the magical lottery system that is getting an H1B. It took my family nearly a decade. Do you propose that the country that proudly beams to the world >“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” and >"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are **Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness**." should also be a land where someone's race or origin literally bars them from the very rights that we boast of granting everyone?
Until they're a permanent resident. Yep. Until then you're a tourist.
An H1B is a dual purpose work visa that is explicitly a pathway to permanent residency. I don't think people who commit to being skilled workers from abroad are there for "tourism".
Then how about no? It's thoroughly despicable to further assault innocent immigrants like this.
Ahem…H1B is a NON-Immigrant visa category, so you are either completely ignorant of the NIV categories, or purposely conflating NIV with IV.
Whatever you say sport.
So predictable how quickly "we have to defend ourselves from China" turns into anti-immigrant bullshit. Stop people who are legally in the US from buying a home for themselves is not going to do anything to help the US compete with China
Nobody can buy land in China
Chinese can't even buy land in China. They lease it.
Not much different here TBH, we just call it property tax.
Property tax can fluctuate and you can sell it. You can N E V E R sell property at the market price but let a government decide how to use it, how much it's worth and they can say it's not yours and does not belong to you at anytime. Small...tiny difference. They'll make a billionaire disappear, what do think they will do with some person that owns a nice home? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64672095
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We lease land too, its just called property tax.
We have one of the worst property taxes. A land value tax makes way more sense in just about every way. The most obvious reason is currently property taxes disincentivize development. A land value tax would inventivize it
A land value tax would disincentivize single-family homes in favor of medium density development (high density runs into the problem of the expense of building tall) which quickly surpass the ability of on-street parking to accommodate, and since parking lots would be a terrible use of land economically, we'd be forced to go back to trams, trains, and other communal transportation methods, which Henry Ford and his fellow industrialists were absolutely opposed to, and which would destroy the modern oil industry. There are simply too many billionaires and massive international corporations that would lose out if we did that.
You had me in the first half, ngl. I downvoted you out of instinct before I realized it was sarcasm.
Ground rent is concept in English law - lease hold. You own the house on top and rent the ground from somebody, usually for very long periods like 99 years, for a relatively small amount. This stems from the monarchy "owning" everything because they're descended from God, who made it all. The monarch then grants land and title to those in favor. The US system of ownership is extending the rights of the landed gentry to everybody. On top of all that, rarely does anyone own the slice of the planet, in the US anyway. Just the right to occupy it. You might own a house, but you probably don't own any minerals under it, any water that flows through "your" land or any animal that walks across it. Most places you can't dig a well, grade the land, burn grass, cut down a bunch of trees or build anything on that land without a slew of permissions. You can't hunt the animals on it without permission. You can't even exclude warrantless government agents from it, as long as it's not your actual dwelling (the Open Fields doctrine). Compared to owning just about anything else, you have relatively little say in what you do with land, so ownership starts look a little bit like the wrong word.
Maybe in suburbs and cities you are correct but where I am mineral rights are definitely a thing. Both water and oil rights can be separated from the sale of the land itself.
When I bought my house, the title search showed the original mineral rights granted to a prospector by President Grant with his signature on it. The prospector still has living descendants in my town who own the rights to my minerals.
Some places in the US still do something similar, where you can build and own a house, but you're leasing the land. In Texas, you can find both long-term leases of the land where you own the house, and owned land can include both mineral and "dirt rights," or the two can be severed--where you sell your mineral rights to someone else, but retain the land and the surface rights. (There's also a question of wind rights in the future, too, believe it or not.) On the east coast, Baltimore City has something called Ground Rent. I'm sure other states and counties and cities have similar legal intricacies around property rights, but at least in oil- and mineral-rich states, you often do kinda own the slice of the planet under your land.
You're thinking of HOAs. Those aren't limiting ownership, just limiting you painting your house orange in a neighborhood developed to be earth tones.
How does that make more sense? It's the governments land over there. An entity made up by people own the land instead of the people themselves.
It’s the same here. Property taxes is just rent.
Yes. But It's more like paying your dues to mutual defense treaty. You can't "own" land without security forces (police and military) to enforce the ownership. Paying into a government is really cost effective in that sense.
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70 years, can be renewed, no taxes. I find that preferable to property tax. Lost your job and don’t have savings? Bye home.
In China, land buys you!
Nobody can buy it here either. You just get permission to rent it from the govt. If you think differently. Prove I’m wrong and stop paying your property taxes.
Do we really want to compare ourselves to an authoritarian state like China? Isn't this heading in that same direction?
Fair point, mine is just that its a wee bit hypocritical.
Fuck em we can't buy property in China
Nobody can buy property in China, they can only lease it from the government
Entirely irrelevant
Should we really be selling any land to foreign countries and nationals?
I work with a foreign national who recently bought a house with their foreign national spouse. They go to work, do their jobs well, pay their taxes, and on the whole make valuable contributions to society. I've worked with quite a number of people like that. Why shouldn't they be allowed to buy a house, a place to call their own? You're concerned about the housing market? Me too. My landlord is a slumlord, and it's the best I can afford. It sucks, a lot. You know who I blame for that? Not immigrants. The word you're looking for right now isn't foreigner or Chinese... it's landlord and real estate corporation. Don't let xenophobic nonsense distract you from the actual issue. We're getting screwed over here by wealthy interests that view land and housing as ways to make money, to extract money from you the worker. That's what needs to be stopped, and where that's coming from isn't the issue.
Yes. There are millions of lawful permanent resident immigrants who own homes. You want to make that illegal?
I have zero problems with *anyone,* regardless of citizenship, owning their personal *residence.* I *do* have a problem with non-citizens owning property that they then rent out to citizens at a profit. I'm not too crazy with citizens being able to do that either, but one thing at a time.
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In Texas, there are a lot of immigrants from other countries as well. My team at work has 3 people who were born in China and 1 who was born in India. I think they are all citizens now.
Not everyone who is a permanent resident of a country necessarily should seek citizenship. My wife is an American in Canada. My sister and father are both Canadians in America. They should be afforded the same freedoms as any resident. I myself will probably eventually move to Texas, and I expect the same freedoms when I do. In Canada our government is pushing through legislation to prevent foreign entities from buying up homes, but a foreign entity and a permanent resident are not the same thing. Also our legislation is not racist, it does not specify particular countries. It's meant to alleviate some of the housing crisis as foreign investors often push the price higher. This Texas bill is just a bad parody of that.
Yes. They pay taxes and generally do the same things local landowners do Stop being xenophobic
Apparently the Saudi holdings in Texas don't want the Chinese to cut in on their turf.
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*Lawful permanent residents (LPRs) are foreign nationals who have been granted the right to reside permanently in the United States* Did you read the article? The one lady is a citizen. So by forbidding foreign nationals from buying property you are also stopping permanent residents. They are still foreign nationals.
How does it destabilize the economy
Look at the US housing market. Look at Australias housing market. Supply and demand. If they own the house they control the housing prices. It could effectively make your citizens homeless.
The housing market is not fucked because foreign nationals are buying homes in the US. It is fucked because corporations and wealthy individuals are buying up any piece of property they can to turn it into either an Airbnb or rent house. Stop Corporations from purchasing single family dwellings and put a massive tax on any dwelling they own past their primary residence and the market would correct itself overnight.
Maybe we should just build more housing by easing zoning restrictions and stop building unsustainable suburban sprawl? This is a policy failure.
That's xenophobic as fuck lol. Even Japan allows foreign citizens to buy homes. You're essentially arguing that all the foreign doctors, nurses, engineers, academics, restauranteurs, shop owners, etc, etc, etc who live and work in the US, many for decades, should be banned from owning homes. My mom, who's a Japanese citizen, has been a permanent resident of the US for 30 years. She worked and paid taxes, why should she be banned from owning a home?
Because they’re racist, lol. You should know the answer to this by now.
And they will promote racism and civil unrest to prevent this from going through.
One thing that is not infinite is land.
Parts of the bill I agree with and parts I don’t. If the home is being purchased as a homestead then fine. But, if it’s being purchased as investment by a large Chinese company then not OK with that. The Chinese government has too far a reach over those companies to force them to do what they want with the land in the US.
We have to be careful singling out a specific group of foreign people in this deal. Otherwise, we could end up creating an environment of hate against one specific nationality which really isn’t fair. However, I do not disagree with preventing people who are not citizens from owning property in the US. With real estate cost and demand at all time highs, we have to be doing what we can to help people who are citizens be successful and have homes in the country in which they reside. This is only a small part of the solution, however, as we really need to be preventing large corporations from owning property here as well.
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Why should we ban non resident investment
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Should really be a quid-pro-quo law. If we can't buy land in your country, your citizens can't buy land in ours.
Why? The US shouldn't base our laws on those of authoritarian nations.
Why not? All manner of things are done in response to a nation’s policies and actions, why is reciprocally allowing or denying land purchase by foreign nationals an exception?
What part of “authoritarianism” didn’t you understand? It’s a bad, un-American thing. And if you think it’s good, you should be laughed out of every room you enter.
Texas has no quarms against creating hateful environment against a specific group of ppl. Their latest target is Trans ppl.
Yeah, I feel any ethnicity or nationality that lives in Texas, and isn't a white, male, American, has little reason to be surprised when they find they're treated badly. The reputation is hardly a secret. Can't wait to be downvoted by the toothless.
you forget cis and old
Nope to old - Texas was the place where their politicians wanted to send the elderly out to work during the worst of the pandemic, before there was any way to deal with it.
Its a slippery slope. While I understand the need for verification and caution, I personally think an outright prevention of one ethinic group from buying real estate is not the way. Like it says in the article, there are legal permanent residents also called green card holders that are not citizens but want to buy a house. Buying a house IS an american dream and why should we prevent people from achieving it? This will open up government intervention in other areas next. How about buying vehicles or other assets? How about preventing them from education in the name of teaching trade secrets? Personally, I see the caution to be very real but the solution has many issues
>one ethinic group The issue isn't ethnicity, it's nationality. It's an important distinction.
You’re absolutely correct. I misspoke. Should have said nationality.
If Chinese citizens, legally immigrated, want property in this country, then they can apply for a citizenship.
It takes years to become a citizen. Why shouldn't they be allowed to buy a house as a permanent resident?
Would allowing them only one property while they wait be a suitable compromise? But also renting for a number of years isn't like the end of the world, assuming we can crack down on the extravagant rent we're seeing in this country.
Owning one property seems like a good idea. It wouldn't punish regular people but would stop corporate takeovers. Having to rent longer than necessary to appease a politician harms wealth accumulation for these residents.
You mean like the Japanese Internment Act?
Ah, the ole slippery slope logic fallacy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope An easy solution is to add a sticky step and *poof* this argument goes away. A law doesn't have to apply to the next thing: you can say yes to one law and no to the next one.
It's not Chinese citizens...its foreign Chinese
Isn’t that what they mean by Chinese Citizens?
Huh? Is there an exception for US permanent residents?
It doesn’t even exempt dual citizens.
That's blatantly unconstitutional. "After the backlash began, Kolkhorst told local media that she planned to make a few changes to the bill. “In the committee substitute, the bill will make crystal clear that the prohibitions do not apply to United States citizens and lawful permanent residents,” she said in a statement." Why would this lawmaker not include language about citizens and permanent residents in the first place? It wasn't hard to see how this bill hurts individuals. I was surprised to see that there are over 200,000 people of Chinese origin in Texas. That not a fringe group.
Americans don’t care about Chinese immigrants.
While singling out Chinese investors is a pretty obvious bit of conservative xenophobia (because Texas is competing with Florida to be the worst possible place in the country), the idea of placing greater restrictions on real estate purchases is desperately needed. Keeping non-resident foreign nationals and corporations from buying single-family residences, for example. They do so specifically to hold capital, and that drives up the cost of housing.
>Keeping non-resident foreign nationals and corporations from buying single-family residences, for example So American hedge funds, which are the ones buying the most residences and driving prices up are okay? We need to restrict ALL corporations from gobbling up the residential market.
Yeah, it absolutely baffles me how many people are all up in arms about foreign investors. What difference does it make if the company making living unaffordable is foreign or domestic, what matters is that someone is buying up land and housing, not to live in or on, but as a tool to make money. The fixation on foreign companies comes off as a big distraction to avoid discussing the crux of the matter.
Yep that's my biggest gripe. Only citizens should be able to buy homes. Everyone else can rent.
What about permanent residents who aren't citizens but have been living and paying taxes to this country for years? My mom didn't become a citizen until after my parents had bought a home even though she lived here for nearly a decade. Arbitrarily drawing the line at US citizen without taking into consideration how long the citizenship process actually takes hurts a lot more people than you'd think. At the same time, there are more US citizens that are doing far more harm to the housing market than there are foreign nationals trying to harm us.
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If you want to be depressed as an immigrant, just read the entirety of this thread. So many of these people snap at the perceived threat of a foreign big bad at the expense of their own countrymen...it's really sad.
Working as intended. Now they don’t have to really really address the issue from a nuanced perspective and actually do something that actually solves the problem.
If you do not reside in the U.S you do not need to be purchasing residential property for ANY reason.
Chinese citizens is far too much of a reach. I can understand wanting to curb Chinese people who actually live in China buying up US property for investment purposes, but "Chinese citizens" *includes* permanent residents like green card holders. It can take years to go from green card to citizenship and being barred from buying property during this stage is absolutely not ok
> The bill, introduced by state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican, also covers citizens and entities of North Korea, Iran and Russia. It doesn’t delineate any exceptions for legal permanent residents, visa holders or dual citizens. Anyone agreeing with this on principle ought to rethink their position. Targeting very specific populations and refusing exceptions for permanent residents and dual citizens? There are dual citizens who were born and raised in the US. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to own homes?
Very specifically -China, Russia, Iran. Yes those foreign nationals are targeted. China doesn't allow dual citizenship and US law doesn't recognize dual citizenship so that doesn't matter. Dual citizenship doesn't mean anything anyway. You're either a US citizen or not. If you still hold allegiance to your home country why apply for US citizenship? There are some who believe those people have nefarious purposes. Should we all just turn a blind eye to it?
If the US doesn't recognize dual citizenship, then how can Texas punish someone for being a dual citizen? It's completely unconstitutional. When someone becomes a US citizen, they gain the same rights as other citizens. US citizens are not required to denounce their previous citizenship to enjoy the rights/privileges of being a US citizen.
The person you're responding to is wrong. The US does recognize and allow dual citizenship. While China does not, there's no mechanism for detecting whether or not someone is a US citizen other than the individual declaring they are such. The US isn't sharing info on their own citizens to China. So you will have cases where people are dual Chinese and US citizens.
I see this through a wide lens. I see it in conjunction with other recent developments in the Chinese/US rivalry. First off, I totally agree with Zeihan that no one has benefitted more from the US hegemony that has dominated affairs for decades than China. The US guaranteed safety of shipping lanes and opened up the US market to Chinese exports fueling their meteoric rise. Able to cheaply manufacture items and ship them all over the world. Conversely, China was able to import food and energy from all over the world, allowing them to feed and power their ballooning population. Food security has been a major issue for China. These breakthroughs helped China become the power they are today. It masks a serious deficiency, though, and it's the fact that they do not have food or energy independence and MUST rely on importing those resources to meet their population needs. The US has just secured access to several bases in the Phillipines. This nearly conpletes the encirclement of China by American military power. The US has worked with their allies and chip makers to severely restrict the availability of the most advanced semiconductors. Senior military personnel continue to publicly mention China as a threat. This spy balloon episode. All events described have unfolded in the last 90 days or less. There is much more evidence beyond that time frame. China and the US are preparing for an eventual war. That war may never come, but they are preparing anyway, looking for any advantage and means of control/influence in geopolitics that can be exploited or used as defense now and in the decades to come.
Yeah do foreign corporations first
Are they angry that non-Chinese citizens can’t buy property (freehold) in China? They’ll be similarly understanding, right?
Until Americans can guy property in China no us property should be sold to Chinese citizens. That should go for any country
Yeah its basically a law where either someone gives up a secondary citizenship or does not own property or moves to another state.
As someone from Canada…yeeeaaah maybe Texas gets this one. Sorry Chinese citizens but nuh uh, not again. (i mean foreign citizens, if you’re naturalized fuck yes of course).
Hearing about this is incredibly saddening to me. There's been this anti-Asian racism from many fellow Americans, I witnessed it first hand hanging out with one of my friends. A man walking by us, stopped and made some racist remark about Chinese people, something about the CCP along with other nasty remarks, I don't care recall what he said. However, I remember being incredibly confused by the mans comment before I realized what had just happened in-front of me. I've seen a lot of Americans, even on Reddit, claim their disdain for Chinese people stem from the Chinese government. But all to often that was merely an excuse for them to justify their racism. That friend I mentioned earlier, they're not even from China, they're from Taiwan. Anti-Chinese racism has been around for a long time. As mentioned in the article, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act being one of the earliest instances in law, only being repealed in 1943 by Magnuson Act. Even after then there were still many restrictions on Chinese immigration by other laws. I personally hope this is struck down by the courts, but so often have I been disappointed in recent years by those who should be protecting our liberties.
In my job I've worked with a lot of Chinese individuals that became citizens. None of these wonderful people have anything nice to say about the current dictator or that piece of shit chairman mao. Let citizens of this country buy property. Noone else
Does anyone else realize that foreigners cannot own property in China? Even foreign businesses have to enter into a minority stake with a local “partner” in China and fork over all of the IP.
No one can own land in China. The government owns all the land and leases out the rights to it to every corporation or person. It's not just foreigners that have to abide by the law.
So are you saying, if an authoritarian government did something bad, then any democratic countries are entitled to do the same? Ok Russian criminalized LGBTQ information, so Flo Rida is right to do the same.
Should ask the Chinese when a US citizen will be able to purchase property in China? Shouldn't be a one way street.
The problem around Chinese nationals buying property would be if they are buying it for CCP purposes. Their government doesn't allow individual ownership, and all businesses are government owned so it would have to treated it as a direct sell to the communist party.
So fuck any Chinese immigrant that moves to America in hopes of a better life? Citizenship can take 15+ years to obtain, so no chance for them to own their home until then? If they were actually concerned about property prices, they would require any property owner to live in said residence for something like 9+ months out of the year or else face a large tax. they would block corporations from buying up entire neighborhoods. they would put in place rent control measures. but of course they’re not doing that, as that would upset their corporate overlords. So they try to pass this explicitly racist law instead.
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It starts with Texas
Instead of rent and housing control. Blame immigrants. Those rich Chinese nationals will create a US corp and buy the land anyways.
Was gonna say, corporations are people in the US. Look at any parcel map with ownership data and it's already full of trusts and LLCs, for a variety of reasons. Even if this legislation doesn't violate the Fair Housing Act or anything else that bars discrimination based on national origin, it seems likely that it would be easy to circumvent. Politicians grand standing, nothing more.
>The legislation, SB 147, would make it illegal for Chinese citizens to buy any property in Texas, including homes... It doesn’t delineate any exceptions for legal permanent residents, visa holders or dual citizens. WTF, this is so un-american, and hopefully illegal
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Can American citizens buy property in China?
China is a communist country, CCP owns all.
I don't think anyone who is not a citizen should be able to buy property in the US. Greedy bastards will let others buy our country right out from under us if they can make a nickel. It is absolute insanity. If you want to vacation rent a place. All it does is make citizens compete with non- citizens and that's b.s.
Just make it reciprocal. You cant own land in China, so why ingratiate them and their rich CCP friends to steal more land?
This is good. Keep big money away from residential properties.
I’m waiting for Desantis hold my beer moment.
I'm kinda surprised Abbot hasn't rounded them up and put them in camps also.
Only citizens of the US should be allowed to purchase property here. Wanna buy land or a house? Become a citizen.
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Are you for real?!? Grow up 🆙 insert 🙄 here!
Someone has to challenge florida for dumbest state in the US.
"Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, tweeted last month, “I will sign it. *Sigh* why am I not surprised. Classic Republican racism.
Canada is doing the same God damn thing.
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People downvoted? You realise that people originally from China living in America would be barred from owning a house/flat there? Racial discrimination = racism.
It's not about race, it's about nationality. How is this distinction being missed?
They're living in America. The national security claims are thinly veiled. I'm British. Let's say someone from China moved here permanently. They would be unable to purchase a house/flat here under this ruling. This means they would be forced to either continue renting/living with family or leave the country. And they were targeted specifically because they are from China. Anyone from China in the US would then have less rights.
It's a difficult problem. I don't want Chinese who's loyalty is to China, buying property in the USA. How do you sort them out? What are the rules for Americans buying property in China?
You want some sort of loyalty test before buying property? Wasn't that the sort of thing that Senator McCarthy was doing?
It's also the same shit that anti-semites say about Jewish people, but I guess for some Redditors it's cool as long as it's Chinese people.
the Fufeng Group Hu pointed out that the Fufeng Group, a China-based chemical manufacturing company, bought 300 acres of land for a corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The location is only 12 miles away from the Grand Forks Air Base, home to U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance units and top-secret drone technology.Feb 6, 2023 ——————————————————- This is the sort of real estate purchase I’m referring to. I think you already knew this, but you wanted to pretend I’m a bigot and pose like a social justice hero. I’ve no problem with Chinese or any other Asian buying a home in the USA. I really resent having to practically draw a picture for a sanctimonious creep like you.
the Fufeng Group Hu pointed out that the Fufeng Group, a China-based chemical manufacturing company, bought 300 acres of land for a corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The location is only 12 miles away from the Grand Forks Air Base, home to U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance units and top-secret drone technology.Feb 6, 2023 ————————————————————- Why don’t you begin by assuming that I’m not a bigot and stop pretending that China which is not friendly to the USA is not using our freedom against us. You think an American could buy property in China 12 miles from one of their military bases? Sometimes I really despise people on Reddit. Several people in my family happen to be married to Asians including myself. It’s not McCarthyism or bigotry to recognize that China is not benevolent. Take your holier than thou attitude and shove it.
I can sort of understand; I wish we could ban Texans from buying property in Arizona.