With the number of villas for sale on the island near an all-time high, ya gotta say "atta girl' to Jane Kelly, an agent at Islandia Real Estate.
She found ammunition for sales in a piece of legislation in Congress which would give international buyers a three-year resident visa if they spend at least $500,000 on a new house.
"One of the most intriguing ideas we’ve heard to help shore-up the nation’s housing markets," she wrote on the Islandia blog. Similar bills have been introduced, and died, over the past 10 years.
“This is a way to create more demand without costing the federal government a nickel,” said Senator Schumer (D-NY). “Our housing market will never begin a true recovery as long as our housing stock so greatly exceeds demand. This is not a cure-all, but it could be part of the solution.”
The bill was introduced by a Representatve from Hawaii, where the real estate market could benefit from international buyers, too.
Yes, the housing market does so greatly exceeds the demand because the average American can not afford to buy a house in this economy. Making American homes more readily available to foreign buyers will not help American home ownership.
The American family where the husband and the wife both work and support two kids, need an affordable mortgage that the banks will lend out to them with some of the bailout money the American families gave them. Sorry for the rant….Al
This is a great idea! Since low,low (under 4%) mortgage rates haven’t seemed to produce a sufficient number of buyers, this legislation may help a bit. At least at the higher end. Answers to domestic economic problems are increasingly global. Residential real estate is probably not an exception.
It will only pass if both liberal democrats and conservative House republicans both back it. Hope they do.
And what happens after the 3 years passes?