I’m all for reducing the incentive to use housing as tools for investment. Houses should not be used as people’s retirement nest egg.
I actually don’t believe there’s any mechanism by which large-scale home ownership (one entity owning many homes) affects market prices, unless it’s so extreme that it’s down to one owner owning all the real estate.
From my macroeconomics classes (which were admittedly 25 years ago) I don’t remember anything about a relationship between firm size and the price of goods.
I think the thing that’s really causing housing prices to skyrocket is the constant artificial constraint on new housing construction, which causes permantly-insufficient supply, which makes prices high.
When there’s a company with $1 billion dollars in cash competing with people’s needing to take out 25 year mortgages at 5% interest, and the company sees it as a way to profit, the company will outbid the individual every single time and drive up market prices.
Individuals buying with the added cost of interest will never be able to compete with corporations that’s have cash on hand and can make a profit by renting out the house.
The more homes a company owns, the more capital it warms to buy more homes.
You don’t need one company in the country, you just need a few in a single desirable city.