Wow, amazing. Foreigner have been buying up housing stock and driving up the price for a long time. They don't give a shit about the property or renting it out or whatever. They just want their money somewhere safe, and a lot of these foreigners are ignorant people who don't understand anything but property. The alternative is to keep the money in their home country where it gets taxed or confiscated by the government or mafia, so they feel they need to buy US housing. My own brother couldn't find a house because as soon as they came on the market, they were snapped up by foreign buyers who paid cash up front, no questions asked. He finally found a good house because he was convinced it had been mis-listed in the realtor database.

Oh. This was the Hawaii Senate. Stupid OP deleted that from the headline. Still, it's a start.