> Institutional investors like Fundrise as well as pension funds, and public companies have been steadily acquiring single-family homes to rent for a profit. This has only increased competition for homes at a time when housing affordability is a primary concern for many.

And that's my issue. With these giant banks propping up prices with these schemes, prices won't return to a natural equilibrium.

> However, some, like Tomasz Piskorski, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, believe that the build-to-rent model is more efficient than the traditional model of selling each newly built home to separate private individual buyers.

If there were enough homes being built for sale at affordable price points, then one might make this claim with a straight face. But one cannot make this claim while prices are too high for buyers to afford without rolling on the floor laughing one's @$$ off. If one truly believes more rentals are needed, then in addition to "communities" of single-family homes, they should be building apartment complexes, and they should be building in areas where there are already lots of people competing for rentals. Instead, they're trying to prevent the pricing from bringing new home sales down enough to reduce the prices to a reasonable level.

> He told Insider in early November that the build-to-rent trend is a "useful response to the market's needs."

He needs to go see a farmer, who should insert a cattle prod up his @$$ and shock the h311 out of him.

> "Professional rental companies in some ways bring more efficiency and they might help solve affordability problems because of very high mortgage rates right now," Piskorski said. "A lot of people simply cannot afford to buy a home."

We know how to fix that, though. Let home prices come down far enough and sales will pick up.