They are simultaneously responsible for bidding up the price of homes while paying far below the average price for a home in pretty much every state they are present in.
Texas is effectively one of the only markets with a substantial proportion of new buyers being institutional investors and this is largely due to the number of dilapidated homes in the area.
Housing should be consumption, not an investment, but the perpetual-ownership structure of property rights combined with low property taxes turns them into an investment. But not a "consume less today, produce more tomorrow, everyone wins" investment, it's the "rich people get paid for being rich" type of investment. Yes, many/most of those people are less rich than a corporation, but the problem is exactly the same: deadweight loss in the economy.
Renting is good - and requires the type of economic activity you would want banned.
> Housing should be consumption, not an investment,
Housing should be subject to market forces so housing developers can get signals about price. If people anticipate demand for homes is going to increase and start buying homes in anticipation of that (speculating), if we didn't have our stupid zoning laws, homebuilders would be able to build more homes and resolve the demand imbalance before it happened. This is a good thing. The problem is our stupid zoning laws, NIMBYism, etc.
> deadweight loss in the economy.
...no
It would be better if the people renting it and living there were the owner.
They fail to give the percentage of homes on the market they've been purchasing. In my market, it was more than 25% of all homes for sale. So let's explain away how removing a quarter of available inventory doesn't affect prices...