For the past ten years, real estate prices up and down the West Coast - from San Diego to Vancouver - have been driven by Chinese REITs buying up everything for investment. Below $500k you often find yourself competing with cash offers from foreigners that have no intent of ever living in the place. Large swaths of downtown Long Beach, downtown LA and downtown Vancouver are empty: These condos and houses were not bought because the Chinese want houses to be empty, they were bought so that they could store their wealth in places the Chinese government couldn't reappropriate it. They were investing. Which means someone needs to buy it for more than they bought it for or else they're losing money. So. Can... you afford to go toe-to-toe with a Chinese REIT? Because every "housing crisis" story you see is about workers who can't pay what investors want them to.