No, because if there is not enough for other people they either are forced to get exploited by landlords or become homeless. Purchasing real estate is immoral, as is whole notion of rent-seeking through usurpation of unused land such that other persons cannot use it when you don't use it and occupy it.

It is correct. Moral neutrality is a mental defense mechanism to avoid bad feelings. The vast majority of folks find it easier to rewrite their interpretation of events than tell themselves no.

Purchasing housing can be morrally neutral.

What you do with it (or, don't do with it) is not morally neutral. I believe that hoarding it, preventing others from living in or purchasing it, is immoral.

That's probably why there was a second clause to their statement, which you appear to have ignored.

A fair point. I thought what I was saying was too obvious to expound further, but here goes:

Buying a house in order to leave it vacant is morally neutral. To wit,

Mike Murderer buys up real estate along the river and leaves it empty so that the dead bodies he stores inside are not discovered. Mike has acted immorally!

Mayor Susan convinces the city council to buy up real estate along the river and leave it empty to facilitate moving the residents there to higher ground to avoid expensive and dangerous seasonal flooding. Susan has acted morally.

But they both took the same positive action: purchasing real estate. This action was morally neutral.

As other people in this thread have correctly noted, it’s the justification not the action that has moral implications.