[uoaei]

Investors have heard of such a thing as "diversification" and will surely look at their entire portfolio before jumping to short-sighted conclusions. It's very likely real-estate investors have an intimate knowledge of rental markets. There's a nontrivial cost to acquiring tenants and maintaining the buildings.

If they did the math after all the various factors are considered and this happened, then clearly this is the best play from their perspective. It's not even malice it's just "economic sense", except the way the economics works out just happens to screw people with barely enough money to afford rent.

That still doesn't mean they're not culpable under the textbook legal definition of collusion.