meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

CLASSIC: Foreign Investment and the Housing Crisis

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.211K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 80 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ben, Matt and Noel present a Classic episode: In cities across Canada, the US and other parts of the world, the cost of living continues to rise -- and housing becomes increasingly unaffordable. Rental rates outpace inflation. Owning a home becomes virtually impossible for millions. Economists have debated the usual causes of this crisis for years... but it appears there's a variable many people haven't considered, something a little stranger than domestic supply and demand. Investors from across the planet are pouring money into real estate, not for a home, but as a safe haven for storing cash.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Fellow conspiracy realist, we are returning to you with a classic episode, and I was talking about this off air.

0:08.0

I'm getting increasingly weirded out by how prescient this stuff seems to be and how things keep accelerating.

0:17.8

Back in, oh gosh, what was it, 2020, we looked at foreign investment and the housing

0:24.2

crisis.

0:26.0

Yeah, Ben, I think you probably see some of the same Instagram accounts that I do, but I follow

0:30.5

an account showing houses for sale in Japan and how incredibly affordable they are.

0:36.7

And boy, oh, boy, I'm trying to be that kind of foreign investment in real estate in the other direction.

0:41.3

But we're not talking about individuals coming in and buying homes for their own personal use.

0:47.3

We're talking about real estate as a scaled business model with the kind of money that absolutely trumps individuals who just want to

0:56.1

own a home for their family, you know, and have some sort of thing to pass down to their kids.

1:01.5

It's really harder and hard to do that when you got all this foreign money coming in and

1:04.8

buying up all these available properties.

1:08.2

And baby, we're talking about the kind of profits that have quarterly earnings,

1:13.0

where you get shares, and then you get a little bit of money on top of all those shares you

1:18.7

bought in those huge corporations. We've all rented from, you know, I think over the years,

1:24.9

organizations that probably are doing some things like this.

1:28.2

I certainly have.

1:29.3

We also know that even back in 2020, there was this immense generational divide, not just in the

1:36.3

United States, but also in places like Canada, because homes were becoming increasingly

1:42.5

unaffordable due to this vast web of obscure financial

1:46.6

corporate conspiracies and money laundering, you know, one for all the so-called boomers in the

1:53.2

crowd. Houses were way cheaper. You know, I've heard the stories where someone's like,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.