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How a former Saudi official got enough money to buy eight luxury condos in Boston to remain a national-security secret
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Comments
We should probably
Start limiting the amount of property foreign nationals can buy in the US.
I agree, but for different
I agree, but for different reasons. We have a housing crisis and the top 2% of the condos/townhouses in Boston are often held by rich foreigners simply to park their money. They don't live in it, don't pay state income tax, don't pay sales tax like residents who lived full-time in the units would. And property values in Boston have increased so much that even with expensive condo fees they're still making money on their investment.
The easiest fix I can think of is to increase property taxes but more than offset it with an increase in the residential exemption. Then full-time residents wouldn't be impacted (or could even get a slight reduction in property taxes).
Except
They are paying property taxes and using basically zero of the services that those property taxes fund. No kids in BPS, no cars using the streets, no trash to be picked up (the big buildings don't use PWD for their trash). Yes, they're not paying state income tax or sales tax but they're not residents and they're not getting any significant services from the state. Should Barack Obama not be allowed to have his multi-million dollar estate on Martha's Vineyard because he (presumably) isn't paying Mass. income tax?
Fact is these housing units just wouldn't get built without the money that comes in from foreigners looking to park their wealth in the U.S. And the City does benefit in a number of ways -- these projects create construction jobs and generate linkage payments, not to mention the aforementioned stream of property tax. It also does take some strain off the market since some of the units in these high end buildings are occupied by folks who might have bought elsewhere in the city.
I mean, developers are not saying, well, we can't sell that 50th-floor penthouse to a Saudi prince so let's just make it affordable housing.
My argument was never about
My argument was never about who couldn't buy housing (be they foreign billionaires or former presidents), simply that they wouldn't notice the impact of their property taxes going up, since they'd likely still be close to breaking even with my proposed increase in property values. And for those owners who are bothered, they're welcome to sell and park their money elsewhere. Plenty of other mega rich people who either don't care or live in Boston & pays state income tax, as well as sales tax.
What are you trying to ‘fix’?
The city of boston already has a residential exemption for owner occupied homes. Their property values going up means they pay more in property taxes too. And as the above posted pointed out, they put a lot of money into the city of boston via property taxes and require nothing in return.
Maybe limit the buyers
Maybe limit the buyers (including LLC's) because it would start to limit money laundering--Taxes are a minor issue when we're talking about the crime that benefits from being able to do this.
Citations?
Money laundering?!!! Not saying it doesn’t happen, but you need to support this accusation.
It's a little late in the
It's a little late in the game for Katy bar the door.
Of course, makes perfect sense!
If I wanted to conduct top secret clandestine anti-terrorist operations in cahoots with the US government, first thing I'd do is buy two neighboring units on the 52nd floor of One Dalton currently assessed at a total of $13.3 million.
The question is not whether he's a crook, but
whether he's *our* crook.
maybe Canada has the right idea..
They enacted a two year ban starting Jan 1 that non Canadians are banned from purchasing residential real estate, in part to combat this same scenario.
We’ll see how that shakes out
They also enacted a luxury car tax on cars over 100k, which is most luxury cars.
Persuasion fail
This would have been quickly resolved if the Saudi government had succeeded in convincing him to visit one of their embassies.