We have to stop spending so much time/energy/money on trying to prop up housing prices. The valuations were clearly in a bubble. Now that the prices are more grounded in reality how about letting supply and demand dictate the prices?
Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
51–60 of 128 posts
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#52Give me your energetic, your rich, Your striding elite yearning to oppress, The vaunted gild of your desolate shore. Send these, the landowners, first-class-turbulence-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the door for those with gold!
America is broke. If you want to tax the rich you need to let them into the country. And people buying a house aren't that rich anyway. Besides, this is very similar to the immigration policy of Canada or Singapore, which also give points if you buy property and start a business in the country. Their economies are vastly outperforming ours and it might be worth emulating them.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
People that have $500,000+ houses that they need to sell.
Banks, not people.
People too. There's plenty of people that would like to move to find employment, but have a mortgage that they need to get out of first. The market is pretty terrible at the moment, and these people end up being stuck. I know a few personally.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The only beneficiaries I can think of for this program would be rich capitalists from China and the Middle East ..." Actually, Canadians are largest percentage of foreigners buying homes in the U.S. at 23%.[1] [1] Canadians Warm to Phoenix, Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020401060457659...
They would extend the offer only to those that spend half a million dollars on a home. I have a feeling that excludes most of the Canadians bargain hunting for property in Phoenix.
Pass this proposal and half a million dollars will be a bargain.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#55$500K minimum? Anything to breathe life into the higher segment of the US real estate market ;)
Kidding aside, are they also going to retro-actively award visas to all those that already own their own homes and do not currently have their paperwork in order? That would be a very quick way to solve another issue that was on the front page earlier today.
$500K is a bit stiff as a lower limit.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#56I'm not convinced how effective this will be. The parts in the US where housing prices took the largest hit are also the parts where a foreigner with access to USD$500,000 is least likely to want to go in the first place.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#57$500K minimum? Anything to breathe life into the higher segment of the US real estate market ;) Kidding aside, are they also going to retro-actively award visas to all those that already own their own homes and do not currently have their paperwork in order? That would be a very quick way to solve another issue that was on the front page earlier today. $500K is a bit stiff as a lower limit.
“Applicants can spend the entire amount on one house or spend as little as $250,000 on a residence and invest the rest in other residential real estate, which can be rented out,” the paper added.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#58I'll go out on a limb here and say I like the basic idea. One major detail I would change is to make it a $100,000 or $50,000 minimum instead of $500,000. There are many parts of the country where it's hard to even find a house that's as expensive as $250,000. I'd like something like this to be open to all parts of the country and I'd like it to be open to middle class as well, not just wealthy people. Why do I like…
Well, the places where it's super hard to find a house at 500k, and somewhat easy at 100k, are the border states... New Mexico, Arizona, Texas (and Nevada). In these places, the 500k house is going to be the cream of the crop... the top 1%. Southern California is a different issue, but this isn't going to help the places where the housing market really took a shit, like Nevada and Arizona, because the market there is saturated with foreclosures of homes that might have originally sold for 500k but are probably worth half that much in the current market. The poisonous idea is that these homes were actually worth that much money, but they never were. The artificial demand of the sub-prime mortgage crisis pushed prices up where they should never had been. The 500k limit would try to, again, artificially inflate the worth of the house by stimulated demand in the highest priced homes, homes which should probably sell closer to 350, because the 150k premium might be worth it for some families to get a visa. The second problem with this thinking is that anyone who qualifies for a 500k house would likely be rich enough to get a visa in the US anyways as an investor.
A lower limit of 150k would be reasonable for boosting the middle class, and actually helping the housing market, but that's obviously not the goal.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#59I'll go out on a limb here and say I like the basic idea. One major detail I would change is to make it a $100,000 or $50,000 minimum instead of $500,000. There are many parts of the country where it's hard to even find a house that's as expensive as $250,000. I'd like something like this to be open to all parts of the country and I'd like it to be open to middle class as well, not just wealthy people. Why do I like…
You're assuming that the people will live in the homes that they buy. They could just as easily spend $50,000 on a shack in Detroit, let it continue to decay, and just live in an apartment in Palo Alto.
Of course, I guess that loophole could be closed in the legislation, but every patch I can think of for closing it has its own loopholes.
Re: Buy a home, get a US visa, Senators propose
#60The only beneficiaries I can think of for this program would be rich capitalists from China and the Middle East who are exporting their gains and sinking them into foreign property already, and who would now get a fast-track for immigration as well. I guess Congress would like to get campaign contributions from these people (once you have a green card, you can legally make political contributions to U.S. politicians)…
Think of it this way: Schumer is (partially) owned by the finance industry.