"Concerned about illicit money flowing into luxury real estate, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that it would begin identifying and tracking secret buyers of high-end properties."
"The initiative is part of a broader federal effort to increase the focus on money laundering in real estate."
— The New York Times
12 Comments
There goes the housing boom...
The one thing this country can’t stand is prosperity.
Carrera, are you seriously taking the side of shadow LLCs?
Read it and weep, limited application, limited areas, full of loopholes. A few of the unprepared will be caught, the big players will just set up fictional loan companies to avoid the cash disclosure.
Just like Swiss Bank disclosure, funny how no US politicians were named. Or anyone else for that matter.
Davvid, I’m against crooks, but equally against the new methods to catch them, turning in your neighbor for using cash is a little Stasi to me…just agreeing with Greyhound, good or bad it’s driving a market and lets be honest, not all good money is good…as Michael Corleone said “….we’re all a part of the same hypocrisy”….the definition of “crook” is getting blurry.
This is not surprising. Cash purchase of US real estate is one of the biggest money-laundering channels into the country.
Carrera, That just sounds like like contrarian nonsense to me.
^If you tell lies big enough and people believe them long enough they become truths, and if someone speaks against these truths they are called “contrarians”.
prosperity=money laundering?, no wonder you're trying to defend crooks
My prosperity comment has to do with the fact that if you obtain it somehow you have to explain it or justify where you got it... and when something is going too well they launch an investigation about it....using these kinds of methods to uncover the bad guys is increasing and is a dangerous path for the good guys....just looking out for the good guys.
Carrera, The NYTimes did a great series on this issue last year. You should read it and familiarize yourself with the issue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html?_r=0
David, thanks for the fascinating article, full of international intrigue, gave me a broader view of the problem.
Being a car guy I run into cash buyers & sellers all the time. The Feds thought they plugged that hole years ago, yet these guys just wiggle around the details... in a free society these kinds of things are impossible to regulate... where there is a will, there is always a way and the idea of asking a buyer "who are you and where did the money come from?" seems ludicrous to me... may be one thing for federally regulated banks, but another for private concerns... where's that going to lead? "I'll have a #3 with a coke"...." fine, who are you and where did you get your money?"
My take from reading the article is it's the lawyers keeping the secrets and the law says they are required to do that, so it's a Catch 22. They have weaved a complicated web and it seems that the more they regulate the bigger the web gets... and crooks love hiding in webs.
Like catching El Chapo, it didn't stop anything.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.