Except they aren't actually occupying the pool, just gatekeeping it. They still have to find tenants in order to actually make money.
In other words, the real problem -- the only reason they can charge exploitatively high rents in the first place, the outsize profits from which is fueling the buying spree -- is lack of supply in places people want to live. As fun as scapegoating landlords is, it doesn't actually fix anything. The way to actually solve the problem is to allow denser zoning!
I think the key is to tax the absolute dog shit out of houses after your first or second. A company can own a house but unless the company lives there, tax the dog shit out of it.
Make it so that houses are reasonable for people to own and live in but speculators are out here subsidizing all our schools, parks, and roads.
Well, they could certainly try, fail, and go bankrupt when the rents and values collapse. (If that's not the result, it just means you need to densify the zoning even harder.)
Let's kill two birds with one stone by having a communist revolution. Boom, no more hoarding empty houses for profit, and the government which now serves the people instead of Capital can build more houses. Ideally according to sensible neighbourhood planning.
That only causes you to lose your security deposit and then rent goes up after they send in some sketchy fuck to do an inspection while you're not home.
I feel like calling it capitalism gives it too much credit. The arguments in favor of capitalism is that competition increases efficiency and production and lowers prices. That's not happening with the real estate market, it's full of monopolies, collusion and trust and to actually allow for capitalism you need government intervention to break that up and fight the consolidation of wealth and power. What we have is a mercantile plutocracy. Capitalism has its own problems too, but this isn't even that, and even with those problems it's a step up from the corrupt bullshit we're dealing with here. I think calling it capitalism gives them more footing in arguments than it deserves. We should call it what it is, a corrupt plutocracy of elites.
Corruption and all the bad things you've mentioned are capitalism's fuel. Capitalism doesn't work without being horrible. That's just how it is. The pursuit of infinite profit in a finite medium is just impossible, so capitalism resorts to shitty practices and fucking people's lives to keep the profits coming. Until the bubble bursts and all the peasants are more fucked and the rich are ok. There is no way around. I called it capitalism because capitalism is horrible.
The arguments in favor of capitalism is that competition increases efficiency and production and lowers prices.
Yeah, but those arguments are false. Competition is owning an empty house while people freeze to death on the street, because it's "competitive". Cooperation is how you design a productive society. Competition is how you kill an economy.