Economy & Banks

my thought for the evening:

would there be any reason not to have a law in this country banning the foreign ownership of UK property (land, housing, business premises etc.)?

premise: any inflow of money from abroad to buy up property is purely speculative: to extract rent, which is of no use to people actually living in this country, thereby needing shelter and possibly a space to start a small business (!)*;

e.g. a new-build residential block of flats in London

• the law of the land could state that this property can only be sold to existing residents of the land (citizens of the United Kingdom)
  

• or the law of the land (as it does at present) could allow a 'foreign investor' to buy that property, then rent it out to tenants, extracting a rent from the tenant, and pushing up the price of housing as there is more willing purchasers ('Demand') due to the law allowing that property to be sold to foreign purchasers

• and possibly of no use either to the people living in the land where the money has come from - lets say China - as instead of that money being reinvested in the local economy, its being withdrawn from that economy to be placed into another

reference: recall Nicholas Shaxson making a similar (or the same) argument in Treasure Islands ('Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World')