Prices are decided at the margins. Having PE and REITs at every single table, even if their actual ownership is small as a %, makes huge differences.

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Aurornis 21 hours ago | parent [-]

You’re still missing the key point: Hedge funds and REITs aren’t arbitrarily buying housing at any cost.

They are responding to the market. If they overbuy then they will lose money and have to sell at a loss, at which point you could snap up some good deals.

	▲	blactuary 21 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is ridiculously oversimplified, because there is no real market in housing. It is illegal to build in all of the places people want to buy. The purchase of housing by hedge funds isn't a problem on its own, it's simply a symptom of the bigger problem of supply restrictions. The funds themselves say in their financials that they view housing as profitable because of the various restrictions on supply in every desirable city. They explicitly say that if those restrictions were lifted they would not be able to make money in that business and they would exit.
	▲	atomicnumber3 18 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Any attempt to apply supply and demand and market theoreticals in housing is fundamentally misplaced, as the other commenter noted, because there are far too many forces that distort both supply and demand.