It’s unusual that there is one person in this Hacker News comments thread who actually understands how housing market pricing works.

Typically, there is no one. Observationist is correct. Institutional investors deliberately act as market makers because they have more analysis, more money, more ability to hold, and greater resources in general. In the housing market — which is small-volume and illiquid with high transactions costs — this matters a lot.

Literally every other person in the entire comments has zero idea how pricing in the housing market functions nor how institutional investors can and do manipulate it despite purchasing a relatively-small percentage of available stock.

I’m always surprised by how fucking dumb the “smart” people at places like Hacker News in fact are.