[ProtectOurFreedom]

My wife's best friend is shopping for a condo in Silicon Valley and last week her realtor explained how the market is now dominated by Chinese house-shopping tactics. You put your house on the market on Thursday, hold a Realtor tour on Friday, hold one Open House on Sat and Sun. You accept bids ten days after the Open House. This gives people in China time to fly over and look at the property. You open the bids and pick the winner.

I guess it was naive to think that all the money we send to China wouldn't be recycled back to the US. It was bad enough that the Chinese bought up so much of our profligate government's debt, but it seems worse to have them use all the money we sent them over decades to snatch up our properties and drive our housing prices way beyond the stratosphere. We just traded low prices for TVs, VCRs, DVD players, cameras, and clothes for unaffordable houses and new neighbors who don't speak English.

It is shocking to think that our Silicon Valley housing prices are "cheap" to the Chinese.

DeLeon Realty Director of Asian Operations Kim Heng, second from left, addresses potential buyers during a tour of a house in Los Altos Hills by DeLeon Realty, for visiting Chinese buyers, in Los Altos Hills, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Qian Yao Zhang, from front left, and Xin Juan Huang, from Shanghai, and another Chinese couple from Shenzhen, (in background, who declined to be identified) pass an upcoming listing from DeLeon Realty during a tour of Palo Alto and Los Altos by DeLeon Realty for visiting Chinese buyers, in Palo Alto, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

[Future Snake Eater]

it seems worse to have them use all the money we sent them over decades to snatch up our properties and drive our housing prices way beyond the stratosphere

I remember these same lamentations about the Japanese in the '80s. I also remember how that worked out.

[dragnet2]

Foreigners, Asians, Muslims etc., have been buying all the fast food franchises, greedymarts etc...

All this while the American private sector middle class gets economically gang banged by government.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Thank goodness I'm not shopping for a multi-million dollar house in Palo Alto (where I was born, btw).

I wouldn't go back there on a bet.

The Chinese can have it.

[Grampa Dave]

In the booming wino country real estate markets as of this past month Asian buyers were number 3 in buying expensive homes.

#1. Texas buyers
#2. NY buyers as they continue to flee NY’s taxes and miserable cold winter weather, hurricanes and July/August dog days to go with those ever increasing high taxes.

#3. Asians, often whom, we would call senior citizens, buying a second or maybe a third home.

#4, A few Canadians trying to escape their winters.

Most of the time, the above buyers pay cash for the homes, often starting at a Million $’s with bidding wars. After buying the home, they will contract with contractors for upgrades and sometimes take out a home improvement loan. As a result, good contractors, bath and kitchen re doers are booked for months.

[Grampa Dave]

In the booming wino country real estate markets as of this past month Asian buyers were number 3 in buying expensive homes.

#1. Texas buyers
#2. NY buyers as they continue to flee NY’s taxes and miserable cold winter weather, hurricanes and July/August dog days to go with those ever increasing high taxes.

#3. Asians, often whom, we would call senior citizens, buying a second or maybe a third home.

#4, A few Canadians trying to escape their winters.

Most of the time, the above buyers pay cash for the homes, often starting at a Million $’s with bidding wars. After buying the home, they will contract with contractors for upgrades and sometimes take out a home improvement loan. As a result, good contractors, bath and kitchen re doers are booked for months.

[driftdiver]

Here’s an example of how free trade works in the long run.

Their standard of living goes up, ours goes down.

[iacovatx]

This is how free trade works. The Chinese sell us stuff and then come to the US to spend the money. It works. But, don’t overlook every opportunity to speak to these Chinese visitors and the immigrants, too, about American culture and the pre-2008 Constitutional government that made the US the economic success it has been. Let them know that socialists are a threat to their investment. Use the example of the decline of Britain and of their own obstacles due to socialists. They will not be comfortable responding, but they get the message.

[Stentor]

Strip the assets out of your company, get your family set in the US and try to time getting out of China before they execute you.

[Minutemen]

U. S. A................

SOLD,

TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER!

[Vince Ferrer]

Don’t worry about it. We’ll get the money back, and the houses stay here.

[GeronL]

Oh crap, hard working, polite people who are good at math, there goes the neighborhood....

can it get any worse??

[Snickering Hound]

They're already used to laboring under totalitarian regimes

[Owl558]

“It is shocking to think that our Silicon Valley housing prices are “cheap” to the Chinese.”

This has been going on in my East Bay home town of Castro Valley where Chinese buyers have been gobbling up homes for years. These are $400,000 to $800,000 single family homes, not multi-million dollar mansions like in the article.

What I’m seeing are whole families, including grandparents (and sometimes both sets of grandparents), relocating from there to here for a number of reasons. I’ve had many a pleasant discussion with these folks in what I imagine is a classic American style - with the children translating in perfect English.

I have observed that these are people generally determined to become American and are investing in our culture. They’re leaving China because it is still a communist dictatorship (#1 reason) they want more children (#2), they’re getting out now while they can (my paraphrase), freedom and education.

To any saying that these folks vote democrat, I can only say that our area is one of the most conservative in the Bay Area. The schools are good. My kids got a great education not because of the teacher’s union, but because Chinese parents brought the overall standards up.

As a history guy, I remind kids and parents alike about the long history the Chinese have had in the United States. During the Gold Rush, Americans came to “see the elephant”,
Chinese came to see “the mountain of gold”.

[JediJones]

The Chinese have been willing to work hard jobs for low pay instead of sitting back and living off mommy and daddy or off of welfare checks. That’s the kind of thing that reaps rewards years later.

[bert]

The thrust of your post is that the Asian money is in fact being returned to America. You apparently didn’t realize that but yur post is evidence of the fact.

The same sort of events occurred in the early 80’s when tons of Japanese $$ were repatriated. There was no real problem then and there is no real problem now.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

If just half of them are coming to get away from communism that is a plus. Too bad the sellers don’t switch countries too.

[kearnyirish2]

“I guess it was naive to think that all the money we send to China wouldn’t be recycled back to the US. It was bad enough that the Chinese bought up so much of our profligate government’s debt, but it seems worse to have them use all the money we sent them over decades to snatch up our properties and drive our housing prices way beyond the stratosphere.”

That’s only half the story; there is no “next generation” of Americans to buy the homes these Red Chinese are moving into. As with the Mexican “replacement Americans”, I suspect these Red Chinese are mostly moving into dying states.

[Vision]

I guess it was naive to think that all the money we send to China wouldn't be recycled back to the US.

You're comparing a few homes sold in the Bay Area to all the money lost to Chinese manufacturing?