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Rent-seeking very much does have to do with being a landlord to economists. It was the example that gave rise to the idea. It's right there at the top of the wikipedia page...

Rent-seeking is when a landlord doesn't make serious improvements, but merely sits on the land as titleholder and gets money for it.

That's exactly what's happening here. Investors buy houses. Drive up prices astronomically. And make money from them. Oh, and they also use software tools to coordinate driving those prices up.

They even have the regulatory capture part down, where zoning has created a massive housing shortage to keep prices going up.