This topic falls under many categories from Homeland Security, economy and liberties.
The land and buildings of the United States should be owned by only the citizens of the United States since it is the United States.
Allowing foreign investors to purchase directly or indirectly real estate or land in the United States puts our citizens and Country at risk. Pricing of housing sky rocketed with foreign investors and wall street investors purchasing houses and apartments for their financial gain with no regard for the cost to the economy or individual citizens/families.
There were bidding wars for houses where an investor was paying way over the actual value of the home and outbidding an individual or family as they had multiple investors in a fund backing the purchase. The real estate agents made a lot of money also.
This adversely impacts our economy by making housing prices bloat to a point where citizens cannot afford them. This requires an increase in salaries and has a domino effect on our economy on many levels.
Houses and apartments are shelter. They are a basic need.
Investors should not be able to take our basic needs and turn them into a financial game for their gain with no regard for the harm.
This is completely different than a individual landlord who purchases a property and keeps rent at a reasonable rate. The impact that the investors had on the housing market caused these individual landlords to also raises rents to unreasonable rates since they could make more money. This prices many people out of being able to afford a place to live and caused others to have to struggle paycheck to paycheck and not be able to afford anything else. They also prevent citizens from being able to afford a home and make them dependent on renting only.
This type of investment should not be permitted.
In addition, foreign investors were creating automatic debits as a way that individuals had to pay rent. If the renter wanted to stop the payment they couldn’t. Their banks in the US could not stop a foreign debit. Therefore, if the individual who was renting ended the lease but the foreign landlord working through a loophole kept charing them with the automatic debit they could not stop it and it was very challenging to get that money returned from a foreign nation.
In addition, this is a homeland security issue as foreign nations can then impact our infrastructure and basic needs by controlling our housing.
Therefore, there should not be permitted any investments into our basic needs and infrastructure such as housing and food by any investors meeting a criteria above that of an individual landlord who is a citizen or any foreign ownership or investors directly or indirectly through loopholes.