[PittsburghAfterDark]

The problem with this is tying up that much capital in speculative single family housing can decimate a balance sheet.

Zillow had tons of faith In the cumulative components of their Zestimate they thought they could scale it to make hundreds of millions flipping houses at scale. Instead they wrote down nearly a billion dollars.

You may have $100 billion at your disposal but when you’ve bought up the hot markets by default you’re your own worst enemy being out of bargains. Then You have destroyed the market you’re trying to monopolize.

[Alberta's Child]

I don’t see institutional ownership of single-family homes as a viable long-term investment strategy. My suspicion is that these big players are doing this as a shorter term hedge against inflation.

As someone who has some experience in this area, I have long felt that detached single-family homes are not good real estate investments at all — for a number of reasons.