You're telling a just-so story, and you can tell because there isn't a simple schematic 1-2-3 story you can make from this about how these people exert control over home prices. Words mean things; wielding scarcity requires you to control enough inventory to manipulate scarcity, and REITs and corporate buyers empirically don't.

I get why people like telling stories like this: it suggests there's a single boogeyman that can be dispelled to solve the affordability problem without painstakingly goring people's oxes state-by-state and municipality-by-municipality. But it's a fantasy.

If you can tell this story in simple step-by-step form, you will. I think you could tell a story about how a large corporate buyer clears out all the marginal buyers for some thin market like an individual subdivision or tranche of new construction housing in the Sun Belt. But I don't think you can tell a realistic story for them being "a huge driving force in setting and manipulating prices" across the whole market. I look forward to seeing your attempt, though.

> it's holding prices steady at some point without the concurrent pressure to sell

Earlier you were arguing that investors were acting as marketmakers and now you say this. Marketmakers make their profit from the difference between buying and selling some asset. They don't want to hold prices, they want turnover. If investors really are acting as marketmakers it's actually a good thing because marketmakers have the effect of adding liquidity to a market.

if they controlled even a notable minority share this might make sense, or the majority of a specific region or type of stock where there are limited alternatives, but I don't see any examples of this. We didn't even see this type of phenomenon in the biggest US crash markets where banks owned entire neighbourhoods; even they were not immune to overall market forces. To suggest PE has anything like infinite money and/or time totally ignores that everyone is subject to opportunity cost. A fund that under performs for any length of time because they're playing some sort of marginal long game won't exist for long.

You just haven't presented any evidence or even a hypothetical where this does or could happen.

This just isn’t true - I sort of wish it where.

> If they intend to purchase properties, it benefits them to depress pricing in the area

Yeah, that’s true of everyone but how would a bank/individual do that? By selling… But if they sell while they’re depressing prices, they lose money!

> Normal landlords don't have effectively infinite money with no forces bearing prices down

Neither do banks. They have quarterly earnings, tax bills, they need to buy more stock, cost of capital etc etc.

> It's a very nuanced and complex system in which these institutional investors have very outsized influence.

Just saying ‘it’s complex’ is trivially true. But, supply and demand isn’t some small factor in that calculation - it’s an iron law that exerts itself at all times.

If a bank wants to ‘manipulate prices’ then, without a monopoly, the only way to do that is to dump or buy. But if you buy up homes to ‘push up prices’ … then you end up with a bunch of homes which you paid more than their current value. Not a great business.

The person who has the real unfair advantage in the US happens to also be the most sympathetic person - the owner occupier.

This is extremely silly.

Prices are high because we don't build enough houses which is mostly because it's really expensive to build houses, then the houses we have built are all owned by empty nesters and people with 1 - 3 investment properties.

Everything else you're describing is completely ridiculous.