You're right on with those comments. A more productive story may have come to light if the reporter had interviewed a few of those big house owners. Who knows, maybe they would turn out to be evil money hoarders whose success came from illicit or immoral conduct. That would have give the article some weight. But an interview might have revealed them as kind, moral, educated, hard working people who made good decisions and society is better for their efforts, regardless of how big their house may be. But that would not have fit this reporter's agenda. So she took the easy way out and just wrote commentary from her biased victim based perspective.
Then there is the possibility that she did interview the people, found them as you describe, and therefore decided to feign ignorance in order to maintain the agenda. Not that any reporter would actually do that.