This is the real deal and has been happening for three+ years. My closest friend is a general contractor for a Chinese investment group. They deal in all cash, and have basically bought everything brought to them for the past 5 years. Amazon techies are not the reason why there is a housing shortage, Chinese money being parked in Seattle is. Wake up folks, gotta find a way to tax these properties like Vancouver did. Personally I will be selling my Shoreline house in three years when its worth a million and getting the fuck out of the town that I have lived in my whole life. Why be house broke when I can buy a nice house flat out in 80% of the country for $350,000. Fuck Seattle, Fuck the Chinese, and Fuck you Charles, just kidding Charles keep doing the good work but for the life of me I don't understand why people want to live here any more. This city is a PC, corporate, no fun having shell of its no fun having former self.

Suprised Berlin is so high on the list. Do their metrics include commercial real estate as well?

@2 I think the metrics are primarily based on commercial properties:

"“With the growth of on-line shopping, foreign investors continue to rank industrial / logistics properties as their number one investment opportunity,” said Jim Fetgatter, chief executive of AFIRE. “The cargo coming into the Port of Los Angeles represents 43% of all cargo coming into the United States. Respondents also say on-line shopping is likely to have the biggest effect on real estate over the next five years. With these as benchmarks, it’s easy to see why investors would be bullish on Los Angeles.”

That being said, this is an unsourced press release, so who the hell knows what this is based on.

PS: Not sure why Charles didn't provide a direct link. Here it is: http://www.afire.org/Files/2018_Survey/R…

@3

Charles didn't provide a direct link because he doesn't want anyone to read the report instead of reading Mudede retelling his one of his favorite stories for the umpteenth time.

This part is interesting:

Ranking of US Property Types (for foreign investors)
1. Industrial (#1 last year)
2. Multifamily (#2 last year)
3. Office (#3 last year)
4. Hotel (#5 last year)

Note that investing in any of these will drive up neither rents nor SFH prices.

And once again, Charles fails to mention the fact that the vast majority of money being invested in real estate in Seattle (and Los Angeles, and New York) is American capital. Why is this? Does Charles fear he can not sustain his argument without constantly and vigorously dog-whistling to xenophobia?

@4-even foreign investment in SFH would only drive up rents if they were being held off the rental market. And just like all of the other hand-wringing articles on this, I have seen no evidence that this is happening.

@1-the fact of Chinese ownership (by the way, do you think you maybe sound kinda a little bit racist?) will not drive up rents. You can only charge what the market will bear, regardless of who you are or where your money came from.

Foreign investors and the tech industry. A marriage made in heaven. So when do we bow to our overlords, before or after our elected officials do?

@4,5 Duh. The "market" is dumping money into buying land and new development, so it will bear a lot. This drives up land costs for everyone. If new projects 'pencil' without full occupancy - and most do - we'll continue to see high end multifamily projects taking down affordable housing, and "the market", regardless of whose money it is, continue to produce luxury priced apartments for our on-going tech invasion (supported by more office investment).

Single family home prices are rising because we are reducing the number of them and not making more. And while some nouveau riche tech dolts will invest in overpriced tall/skinny townhouses, those tiny parcels are like investing in Florida swampland (you can't build anything else there, and anecdotally construction crews will affirm they aren't built to last). So demand for single family houses will continue and prices rise. This is exactly what happened in San Francisco a couple decades ago.

The problem with the "build our way out of this mess" 'urbanist' refrain is that unfortunately housing is NOT fungible and while micros and small apartments are the bulk of what is being produced, larger and family size units - and units 50% and below - are not.

Perhaps there will be a shift to condos in multifamily zones, but developers are wary, and investment capitol seems ok so far with parking in empty buildings. But with most of the wealth/excess capital going to those that already don't need it, I doubt that this will change anytime soon. http://time.com/5111971/billionaires-glo…