I’m confused at who you’ve decided to be angry at for this effect you are observing. To the extent that investors are buying up perfectly good properties and l

I’m confused at who you’ve decided to be angry at for this effect you are observing. To the extent that investors are buying up perfectly good properties and leaving them vacant then you should blame the investor for taking inventory off the market and draining the supply. This was happening a lot in Vancouver I believe, with embezzled funds from China—funny money that wasn’t actually seeking a return on investment, just a safe place to hide. It’s a serious problem in some areas and should be stopped. However an investor buying a property to rent it does not change the supply/demand curves for livable housing in that market. They mostly are lowering the transaction costs of moving into the area by providing rental options. Investors bidding against each other for houses to rent will only serve to take the profit margin of renting and assign a greater proportion of that value to the current owner of the house. The investor bidding war is fundamentally limited by the demand in the rental market. Rental rates go down as more properties are converted to rents, and up as more people want to move to the area. So blame the area for being too desirable, or the renters for being willing to pay too much rent. The housing investors have some marginal effects on transaction costs and increased market efficiency, but the price level is being set entirely outside the investor’s domain based on the demand of people to actually live in that area, the occupancy rate, and the rate of new construction.