By: Nair M. Banks III
In 2025, the global housing crisis continues to worsen alongside the growing trend of countries enacting restrictions against foreign property ownership. In early 2024, as a response to the affordable housing exigency, Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act from the initial two-year effective period to a now five-year period. Thus far, countries have addressed their domestic housing crises by banning foreigners from purchasing residential property. However, these prohibitive laws often run counter to the aims of human rights law and property law. Further, these prohibitive laws are often ineffective because they fail to incentivize the development of housing, do not target the financialization of housing, and continue to waste foreign investments rather than use them to the country’s advantage.
This Note argues that several prohibitions on foreign property ownership are misguided attempts to solve domestic housing crises in an ever-globalizing world because they improperly target foreign investors, rather than the use and financialization of property. This Note discerns the features of an effective prohibition that allows foreigners to continue investing in overseas properties and simultaneously generates funds for the construction of the domestic housing supply.