A/HRC/34/51 of that nature can contribute to housing affordability problems for local residents without providing any evidence of substantial benefits for the broader population. B. Effects of excess global capital 24. The amount of money involved in the purchase of housing and real estate is almost impossible to digest. Cushman and Wakefield, an American global real estate services firm engaging in $90 billion worth of real estate sales per year, publishes an annual report entitled “The Great Wall of Money” which includes a calculation of the amount of capital raised each year for trans-border real estate investments. The total in 2015 was a record $443 billion, with residential properties representing the largest single share. The report notes that “cross border flows will continue to transform real estate investment across the globe”.19 25. Housing and urban real estate have become the commodity of choice for corporate finance, a “safety deposit box” for the wealthy, a repository of capital and excess liquidity from emerging markets and a convenient place for shell companies to stash their money with very little transparency. 20 In addition, corporate tax havens that generate massive amounts of profit immune from taxation, estimated at 30 per cent of global gross domestic product, are particularly attracted to housing and real estate. 21 In most countries, residential investment provides many tax advantages, so that the housing system itself provides a tax haven for the rich (see A/67/286, pp. 11-12). 26. Housing prices in so-called “hedge cities” like Hong Kong, London, Munich, Stockholm, Sydney and Vancouver have all increased by over 50 per cent since 2011, creating vast amounts of increased assets for the wealthy while making housing unaffordable for most households not already invested in the market. 22 Land prices in the 35 largest cities in China have increased almost five-fold in the past decade and prices for urban land in the top 100 cities in China have increased on average by 50 per cent in the past year.23 27. Corporate finance does not only profit from inflated prices in hedge cities, it also profits from housing crises. 24 The global financial crisis created unprecedented opportunities for buying distressed housing and real estate debt, which was sold off at fire sale prices in countries such as Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America. The Blackstone Group, the world’s largest real estate private equity firm, managing $102 billion worth of property, spent $10 billion to purchase repossessed properties in the United States of America at courthouses and in online auctions following the 2008 financial crisis, emerging as the largest rental 19 20 21 22 23 24 8 Cushman and Wakefield, “The Great Wall of Money”, 2016, p. 5. Available from www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/research-and-insight/2016/great-wall-of-money-2016/. See Rodrigo Fernandez, Annelore Hofman and Manuel Aalbers, “London and New York as a safe deposit box for the transnational wealth elite” Environment and Planning A, vol. 48, No. 12 (December 2016). Aalbers, The Financialization of Housing, p. 85. See Sassen, “The global city”. Edward Gleasan and others, “A real estate boom with Chinese characteristics”, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 22789 (2016), p. 2. Available from www.nber.org/papers/w22789.pdf. See also Jacky Wong, “Why China’s developers can’t stop overpaying for property”, Wall Street Journal, 24 June 2016. Elvin Wyly and others, “Cartographies of race and class: mapping the class-monopoly rents of American subprime mortgage capital”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 33, No. 2 (June 2009), p. 333.