Super-rich elites making London 'off-limits'

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are plenty of foreign rich in the U.S., but the difference is that the U.S. residency rules aren't structured as tax/wealth haven or jurisdictional shield for foreign malfeasance. Other countries, like the UK, are. The foreign rich are in the U.S. for business or family purposes. Some Qatari royal trying to hide from legal/financial consequences is better off domiciled elsewhere.

Yeah right. All these Saudi trainee pilots in Florida don't need date square baking moms to invade Miami condos to engage in malfeasance. Laffta.


Russian, Congolese, Colombian, Panamanian rich from crime in NYC, Miami, etc... Rinse and repeat. Much laffta.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by montréaliste

57th street skyneedles, oh wait! All these folks from Poughkeepsie elbowing in...

I don't understand what the existence of high-priced units in a city with more wealthy households than anywhere on the planet has to do with anything.

If you're claiming that NYC has a remotely comparable share of foreign ownership of high end RE as, say, Miami, or London, or Vancouver, you're wrong.

High-end Manhattan RE is absolutely dominated by locals, and most of the higher-end buildings are coops that don't even allow usage as non primary home. NYC doesn't have any neighborhoods with heavy contingents of Gulf playboys or South American or Chinese gazillionaires. They're here, of course, but a relatively small share of the market. Developers don't chase foreign wealth when the wealth is here.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by montréaliste

Yeah right. All these Saudi trainee pilots in Florida don't need date square baking moms to invade Miami condos to engage in malfeasance. Laffta.


Russian, Congolese, Colombian, Panamanian rich from crime in NYC, Miami, etc... Rinse and repeat. Much laffta.

I have no clue what this means. You're saying because Florida is the global center of flight training schools, wealthy people escape taxes by moving to the U.S.

And NYC is known for non-domiciled "Congolese and Panamanian" rich? What? Is this from some movie or something?

Panama is actually a tax haven for Americans. What tax-evading idiot would move from no-tax Panama to the highest tax city in the Americas? How many HNWIs come from Congo? All seven of them? Why wouldn't the handful be in Europe, given the language and colonial ties?

[suburbanite]

Foreign billionaire money is undoubtedly in NYC, but it's not like the needle towers are pushing regular people out of the core because they're taking up so much development land that would otherwise be used for low-income housing or something.

I think it's a far bigger problem in London where you're not just stacking more rich people on top of where rich people have always lived. They're taking up more and more of a finite amount of space given that density (in terms of actual buildable SF) has remained relatively unchanged for over 100 years.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I have no clue what this means. You're saying because Florida is the global center of flight training schools, wealthy people escape taxes by moving to the U.S.

And NYC is known for non-domiciled "Congolese and Panamanian" rich? What? Is this from some movie or something?

Panama is actually a tax haven for Americans. What tax-evading idiot would move from no-tax Panama to the highest tax city in the Americas? How many HNWIs come from Congo? All seven of them? Why wouldn't the handful be in Europe, given the language and colonial ties?

Flight training in military bases. Difference. Do I need to remind you of what happened a little while back?

Do you also deny the presence of Saudi ties to the powers that be at the time of 9-11?

As for Panamanians, and Colombians; the tax abatement is not even an issue, there are plenty of uber rich crooks from all of Latin America in Miami that own property in those cities.

I just question the use of the term "malfeasance" in the context of countries outside the USA. What protections do you claim afford better protection against said malfeasance? Homeland Security? Much laffta.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

If you read just above (I assume you didn't), I posted the details of the investor visa program and recent changes making it tougher. But what really makes it tougher, as I pointed out already, is much tougher scrutiny of whether the claimed job creation actually happens. There have been a number of projects under the earlier version of this program that flopped and created few or no jobs and political leaders are getting annoyed.


https://transportationtodaynews.com/...estor-program/

But beyond this type of abuse, too many projects under this program have turned out to just be boondogles or flops.

The United States is not turning away rich families that want to move here. There has to be a very good reason for them to turn a person with money away.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The United States is not turning away rich families that want to move here. There has to be a very good reason for them to turn a person with money away.

No, they aren't turning them away. Unless they qualify for an EB-5 visa, they are making them enter under the same quotas and restrictions as less-wealthy people. And it is true that some wealthy people might be subject to persecution or other issues, because they are high profile, allowing to qualify for asylum or refugee status.

But the fact is that most of the wealthy people with homes or other assets in the US, and who don't qualify for special programs such as refugee programs or others, don't come as permanent residents. They come under regular entry programs as temporary visitors for less than 6 months. The very wealthy have homes around the world and move among them, so they don't stay in their US homes for more than 6 months at a time and they don't get a job or open a corner market, but they remain citizens/permanent residents of their birth countries or some country other than the US.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

No, they aren't turning them away. Unless they qualify for an EB-5 visa, they are making them enter under the same quotas and restrictions as less-wealthy people. And it is true that some wealthy people might be subject to persecution or other issues, because they are high profile, allowing to qualify for asylum or refugee status.

But the fact is that most of the wealthy people with homes or other assets in the US, and who don't qualify for special programs such as refugee programs or others, don't come as permanent residents. They come under regular entry programs as temporary visitors for less than 6 months. The very wealthy have homes around the world and move among them, so they don't stay in their US homes for more than 6 months at a time and they don't get a job or open a corner market, but they remain citizens/permanent residents of their birth countries or some country other than the US.

Okay, let me rephrase this... If a person who can afford a home worth tens of millions of dollars wanted to permanently live in the United States then that person would not have an issue finding a way to do it. If you can purchase a home worth tens of millions of dollars, then investing $1M into a business is not a heavy burden.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Okay, let me rephrase this... If a person who can afford a home worth tens of millions of dollars wanted to permanently live in the United States then that person would not have an issue finding a way to do it. If you can purchase a home worth tens of millions of dollars, then investing $1M into a business is not a heavy burden.

Maybe, but very few bother because most are content to move among their global properties, spending only a few days/weeks/months in the US at one time. They also have private planes and yachts after all.

Here's more, though, on the program they could try to use to if they happen to come from a country that regularly fills its quotas (many don't--if you're a rich Briton or maybe even Saudi, you can probably become a permanent resident under regular immigration procedures) and do want to become a US citizen--EB-5:

The process from investment to green card takes years. An investor files a petition to be deemed an alien entrepreneur and waits for approval, then asks for conditional permanent residency (CPR) and waits for that to be approved. The investor can live in the U.S. for 21 to 24 months conditionally, after which time she would file a petition proving she had created jobs and kept funds at risk, and ask for the conditions to be removed and get permanent residency in the form of a green card. About five years after that, she could apply for citizenship. Architects of the program, conscious of being seen as offering visas for sale to the rich (a criticism that persisted anyway), built in a requirement that stipulates the project's funds remain "at risk" while the immigrant investor goes through the two years of CPR in the U.S. Typically, deals would be structured for the foreign investors to get their money back in five to seven years. All over the world, people moved to make the most of the program. In the U.S., privately run “regional centers” . . . formed to pool investors’ capital, sometimes from hundreds of people, and facilitate the loans. Maps were gerrymandered so that even affluent areas qualified as TEAs . . . .

Chinese law allows citizens to move only $50K out of the country at a time, according to Bloomberg, so investors enlist friends, family and even strangers to make a series of transfers to invest the required $500K (now $750K). Deals that match Chinese investors with American projects are massaged by intermediaries called "migration agents" who earn five-figure fees for every investor who signs on (or "subscribes"), plus a percentage of the interest earned on each investment. Fraud has dogged the EB-5 program. Sometimes developers would mislead foreign investors with confusing documents or omissions, or take the money and simply never build the project they’d advertised. In 2013, the SEC warned that fraudsters may use layers of shell companies managed by the same individuals to control all aspects of a project, which can lead to conflicts of interest. In the May 2015 GAO report, USCIS had told the watchdog group that it was preparing a new system to better track fraud, but the GAO found "the system is nearly four years delayed." "In the meantime, USCIS does not have a strategy for collecting additional information, including some information on businesses supported by EB-5 Program investments, that officials noted could help mitigate fraud," the GAO report found. In 2016, USCIS Immigrant Investor Program Chief Nick Colucci told EB-5 stakeholders in Miami that "due diligence, monitoring and oversight are the obligations of the designated regional center entity," such as USIF. Colucci said when USCIS is made aware of regional center violations, it may issue a termination notice . . . .

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/national/news...medium=Browser

I bet there are refuges for these people that are easier. Canada has been said to have easier rules. I love to know the ones in the UK.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Maybe, but very few bother because most are content to move among their global properties, spending only a few days/weeks/months in the US at one time. They also have private planes and yachts after all.

Most likely because as a permanent resident they would be subject to U.S. taxation on all of their income, even if it is not generated here.

[10023]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Most likely because as a permanent resident they would be subject to U.S. taxation on all of their income, even if it is not generated here.

This.

The US tax code does not have the concept of domicile.