The natural result of a free market for an essential good with inelastic demand and a finite supply is collusion in result if not in fact making owning the limi

The natural result of a free market for an essential good with inelastic demand and a finite supply is collusion in result if not in fact making owning the limited supply increasingly profitable pulling more money into the system until eventually a handful of major players control most of the space while lobbying to make competing options increasingly hard to build. Eventually it becomes profitable and logical to consolidate players until you are either renting from Rent INC or Homes4U if you rent an apartment. Single family homes see a related raise in price as supply outpaces demand leading the top 10% in wealth including both well off young/middle ages people and old folks investing wealth earned over a lifetime to invest in rental homes competing with people who have income but little wealth driving the cost further out of reach for people who aren't already home owners. Because this benefits half the country we ignore the fact that its sucking the life out of the other half and celebrate the increase in household wealth for middle class folks. Meanwhile another group of vampires is waiting to suck the life out of these mom and pop landlords as they get old and overpay for medical services. Because grandpa lives to 95 instead of 90 there is no generational transfer of wealth other than to the financial services industry which acquired grandpas rental house cheap when he ran out of money at 75 and his house even cheaper at 90 in a reverse mortgage so he could stay in his house for a few more years. 40 years later housing medicine and education have broken the middle class even though the first increasingly builds tiny shitty apartments which fall apart, the second increasingly relies on nurse practitioners and other less than doctors, and the latter pays adjunct professors like burger flippers. Somehow even when those industries absolutely dominate normal folks paychecks not much of the money even seems to stick to the hands of the folks actually doing the work. To say that prices are the result of a free market is both true and meaningless. Unmanaged free markets aren't really good for anything.