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Are rich foreigners the answer to America's housing crash? (Buy a $500,000 house, get a visa)
The Telegraph ^ | 10/27/2011 | Richard Blackden

Posted on 10/27/2011 5:20:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Have you got $500,000 (£312,000) to spare and hail from anywhere but America? If so, one Charles Schumer of New York wants you to get in touch.

That half a million dollars, according to Schumer, one of New York's two Democratic Senators, could be part of the answer to the country's housing crash. Schumer and Mike Lee, a Republican Senator from Utah, are trying to drum up support for legislation that will entice foreigners to invest €359,000, C$508,000, 78m yen or 3.1m yuan in US residential real estate. And the sweetener: a visa to live here as long as you own the property. Is it starting to look attractive? It might be to those who don't subscribe to the thesis that America's best days are behind it.

Until you read the small print. It has to be a cash purchase, you've got to live in the property for 180 days a year, it's not a staging post on the path to citizenship and the visa won't allow you to work in the US. That, of course, would stymie another central aim of US politicians, as the senator admits. "The bill [proposal] does not limit people from being productive," said Schumer. "It simply prevents them from coming here and taking jobs that would otherwise go to Americans." Schumer wants your money, not you.

But he and Lee have correctly fingered a number of trends. More than five years after US house prices began falling – they still are. Prices edged down 0.1pc in August, according to the latest survey by the S&P/Case-Shiller index published this week, and were 3.8pc lower than a year earlier. The efforts by the Federal Reserve to drive down mortgage rates are having little effect.

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: chuckschumer; foreigners; freetrade; globalist; greencard; housing; moneymoney; usa4sale
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Comment #21 Removed by Moderator

To: FReepers; everyone; All

22 posted on 10/27/2011 6:48:21 AM PDT by onyx (You're here on FR, so support it! Compiling New Sarah Ping List. Let me know if you want on it.)
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To: snoringbear
I also agree with this proposal. I do not think a lot of $500K + houses are going to turn into crack houses.

Most of these houses will be purchased with CASH.

This is not going to help inner city houses that are abandoned. It will help affluent suburbs like Scottsdale, AZ and Darien, CT or selling your $2.2 million condo on the upper East side.

These are the type of immigrants WE WANT. Rich people who pay taxes , go out to restaurants, hire landscapers , put in home theater systems, NEED granite counter tops and SS appliances, hire trash removal, cleaning and maid services , have multiple automoblies , send their kids to MIT and in general DRIVE THE ECONOMY.

They are not the people that fly here when nine months pregnant to have their anchor baby at a hospital in Miami.

23 posted on 10/27/2011 7:00:38 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
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To: woodbutcher1963

But they could buy a house under this program, obey all the requirements, get pregnant, and have the kid her. Then the kid is a citizen, and now the parents have preferential status as far as getting into the US. AAnd they can always sell the house.


24 posted on 10/27/2011 7:20:03 AM PDT by ken5050 (Cain/Gingrich 2012!!! because sharing a couch with Pelosi is NOT the same as sharing a bed with her)
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To: woodbutcher1963
These are the type of immigrants WE WANT.

Hear, Hear.

Wealthy Asians are responsible for keeping real estate prices high in San Francisco, in addition to the geography.

Were it not for them, real estate prices there would have tanked; like say Portland Oregon.

25 posted on 10/27/2011 7:33:59 AM PDT by cicero2k
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To: woodbutcher1963

Get real, America is a sovereign nation, not to sold out to rich foreign effers juts because they can come up with $500,000.


26 posted on 10/27/2011 7:46:19 AM PDT by dennisw (What good is a used up world and how could it be worth having - - Sting)
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Many thanks to Salamander and Odhinn

Click the pic and donate
or the Doberman gets it!

27 posted on 10/27/2011 8:10:47 AM PDT by TheOldLady (FReepmail me to get ON or OFF the ZOT LIGHTNING ping list)
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To: woodbutcher1963
I also agree with this proposal. I do not think a lot of $500K + houses are going to turn into crack houses.

The investment can be a house for $250,000 plus the investment of $250,000 in another piece of real estate.

The visa awarded for this/these investment(s) is for three years. What happens after three years? The door has been opened.

There is always a way to get around certain restrictions, and I am thing "frontmen."

28 posted on 10/27/2011 8:26:43 AM PDT by World'sGoneInsane (Just because you say it doesn't make it true. By repeating it, just makes it propaganda.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Before we moved, we lived on the East Coast in a rather high end (300K+) housing development. One house was bought by a hispanic family who over time took in 3 or 4 additional families, so that there was multiple families in that 4000 sq ft home. Cars parked up and down the street, kids everywhere.


29 posted on 10/27/2011 8:30:38 AM PDT by sportutegrl
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To: dennisw

America is a nation of immigrants. If they can buy a $500K house and contribute to society, let them in. That is what America has been built on for the last 300 years.
My great grandparents came here in 1885 and bought a dairy farm outside of Buffalo. What is the difference ?

Obviously, you still need to do backround checks on these people. We do not need any more felons(ie Tony Montana in Scarface).


30 posted on 10/27/2011 10:04:19 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
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To: SeekAndFind
(Cue the "Aw s--t, not this again" guy)

Please, please, please make it stop.

Just let housing and housing backed securities find their market clearing level.

I don't care who you tax.

I don't care what programs you cut, and how much.

I don't care what programs you raise, and how much.

I don't care if Michelle Obama takes away my Magic Hat #9.

I don't care if Justin Bieber is revealed to be Donald Trump's love child with Lucianne Goldberg.

I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.

FAHCRYINOUTLOUD, JUST LET HOUSING AND HOUSING BACKED ASSETS FIND THEIR MARKET CLEARING LEVEL!!!

31 posted on 10/27/2011 10:11:11 AM PDT by Notary Sojac (I wish someone would tell me what "ditty wah ditty" means.)
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To: Penny
This is another 'wholesale' selling of America. And who else but an 'America-hating' Lefty Enterprise could come up with this as a solution to a 'bad' housing market. It serves their agenda in so many ways. Just as does, every other America-damning solution they find inspiration in.
32 posted on 10/27/2011 10:28:32 AM PDT by cricket (Stop the Madness . . . Freedom must prevail. . .)
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To: woodbutcher1963
OK All you guys who think this is such a great idea.

Canada did this about a decade ago, and this is what happened.

Poor families in China, India and Pakistan got all their clansmen together to get $500,000 together. They paid exhorbitant prices for cheaper houses, which put regular Canadians out of the market. After the new immigrants got their visas, they were able to get family reunion visas for the others in their clans, eventually bringing in all those poor relatives.

Canada eventually altered this, limiting it to business investors or those willing to buy Canadian bonds, and limits the visa to the businessman and family only and put other restrictions on the visa.

33 posted on 10/27/2011 11:26:28 AM PDT by VanShuyten ("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
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To: woodbutcher1963
America is a nation of immigrants.

No it isn't. I am a native American....I am not an immigrant and neither are you. My parents were not immigrants either

34 posted on 10/27/2011 11:26:53 AM PDT by dennisw (What good is a used up world and how could it be worth having - - Sting)
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To: VanShuyten

That is no kidding. Surrey BC is Punjab West and has the
only South Asian gangs I’ve ever heard of.

Do not do this!


35 posted on 10/27/2011 11:49:39 AM PDT by RitchieAprile
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To: SeekAndFind

Is this deal open to ILLEGAL ALIENS? I bet it is!


36 posted on 10/27/2011 1:34:22 PM PDT by 2harddrive
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To: snoringbear

The U.S.A. Home of the Sell Outs. This isn’t a nation anymore; it’s a supermarket.


37 posted on 10/27/2011 2:45:59 PM PDT by Windy City Conservative (Kyle Smith)
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To: SeekAndFind

Another really bad idea coming from the treason lobby.


38 posted on 10/27/2011 10:25:51 PM PDT by Pelham (turn out the lights, the party's over)
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To: sportutegrl

“Before we moved, we lived on the East Coast in a rather high end (300K+) housing development. One house was bought by a hispanic family who over time took in 3 or 4 additional families, so that there was multiple families in that 4000 sq ft home. Cars parked up and down the street, kids everywhere.”

Sounds just like here in California. Be sure to thank the idiot politicians who enabled this.

‘Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande’- Dubya


39 posted on 10/27/2011 10:32:33 PM PDT by Pelham (turn out the lights, the party's over)
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To: woodbutcher1963

“That is what America has been built on for the last 300 years.”

Sounds like the public school history books have really gone to the dogs.

When my own ancestors ventured here they were colonials, not immigrants. The locals were a variety of often hostile Indian tribes and not a welcome wagon selling citizenship.


40 posted on 10/27/2011 10:40:53 PM PDT by Pelham (turn out the lights, the party's over)
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