Over in the New Yorker (where the issue of foreign buyers is more substantial than a few vague anecdotes):
Stop Complaining That I, Zathbog of Planet Cibwarv, Am Inflating U.S. Housing Prices
I’m told there’s a familiar narrative that unfolds whenever you try to buy property in a cosmopolitan American city these days. You find a place that you like, put in a bid that’s well above the asking price (just to be safe), and prepare to celebrate, even though the place itself isn’t very nice. It actually pretty much sucks. But it’s a place, and it’s sort of within walking distance of some stuff, so you’re excited. Then you get a call from your broker, who says that you’ve been outbid. “Don’t tell me,” you say. “Yup,” she replies. “It’s yet another alien gazillionaire parking cash in American real estate as a hedge against the volatile economy of his home planet.” This story must be getting old, but you have to stop complaining. It’s simply how the intergalactic economic system works now.
I understand your frustration—really, I do. Because of alien magnates like me, you can’t afford to own property (or even part of a floor of a property) in the city where you work and live. And it’s not like you’re middle-class or anything. You and your spouse make a lot of money at the corporate jobs you took so that you could afford to live in neighborhoods full of competing chain pharmacies and consumer banks. You’ll just have to come to grips with the fact that you’re not rich enough. You could look into the interstellar mining industry, where I made my gazillions, but—oh, wait, I forgot, your spaceships are awful and can’t even get to the star systems with valuable deposits. Never mind.