I agree with this. Owning apartment buildings are one thing, but buying hundreds of thousands of single family homes and squeezing regular people out is detrimental to the entire country.
Is this actually a thing? I'm a bit of a map nerd and I look at the King County (i.e. Seattle and surrounding area) parcel maps a lot, and I haven't seen more than one or two single family residential properties that weren't owned by individuals. Do you know of a neighborhood where a lot of houses have been bought up?
Can't remember where I saw it, but IIRC about half the homes sold in the last year in various Atlanta and Dallas suburbs were by corps, REITs, etc. Phoenix and parts of Florida are in a similar boat.
That doesn't mean half the homes are now owned by these corps, just half the homes purchased in last year or two were by corps. But in some cases they've bought whole subdivisions in one shot, so it's not too far from reality depending on the area.
One weird trick to own the speculators and make housing affordable for young people: build some more homes in desirable areas. BlackRock is only doing the same thing that the boomer generation has been collectively doing for years; but I guess giving young people a way to access that unearned NIMBY rent defeats the point.