Several things can be true at once. The big problem is we've financialized housing, a basic human necessity. This is wealth extraction and, really, state viole

Several things can be true at once. The big problem is we've financialized housing, a basic human necessity. This is wealth extraction and, really, state violence. People buy into this model because they think they're building wealth. For the vast majority of people they own only their own home so they're not really growing wealth at all. After all, they can't just sell their house. They have to live somewhere. And no, this isn't a supply issue. We have enough housing. Second, landlords can form an effective cartel by all using the same tool that spits out the same numbers to all of them. If a company bought up 80-90% of the housing supply and jacked up the prices we'd all recognize the anticompetitive behavior. There's simply one level of indirection here. It's naive to think that cartel-like behavior is an unintended consequence. But taking out this one player won't fix the underlying problem.