> One legitimate reason to not think supply reduces prices is because of big financial companies buying up lots of houses and having effectively free rein to price how they want.
Big corporations don't have unlimited money to do this kind of thing.
And in practice, the expensive areas they do it in, are usually very limited in how much new housing goes up, they're still very much supply constrained markets.
If what you're suggesting was really happening, then what you'd expect to see is an area with a relatively high vacancy rate (due to all the new supply), like 8% or even higher, but stubbornly high prices in spite of that. And I can't think of any examples where that happened. Can you?
This is the propaganda they were pushing about RealPage too until it turned out that it was happening and the market was being distorted.
At any rate, if a buyer notices it happening in their area, then "it's not happening that much" is not only not going to make them feel better, it's going to also make them feel like you don't want to fix it.
Again, do you have examples where a ton of supply was added to a market, the vacancy rate shot up to high levels, but prices remained the same?
I agree that the algorithmic price fixing needs to end, though I think it's mostly gonna be strong in a market where vacancy rates are still low. Harder to maintain the cartel the more options people have.
Big corporations don't have unlimited money to do this kind of thing.
And in practice, the expensive areas they do it in, are usually very limited in how much new housing goes up, they're still very much supply constrained markets.
If what you're suggesting was really happening, then what you'd expect to see is an area with a relatively high vacancy rate (due to all the new supply), like 8% or even higher, but stubbornly high prices in spite of that. And I can't think of any examples where that happened. Can you?