Comment by w10-1

As others have noted:

- Whether this is needed or helps depends not on percentage of owners or buyer/sellers, but on the effect in the market of such players. REIT's have an outsize effect because they are repeat players, and thus lucrative clients for brokers, who qualify themselves by skewing local markets accordingly.

- Policy-wise, it's hard to distinguish by size: second homes, mom-and-pop with a few rentals, REIT, private equity. (This is how corporations get free-speech rights.)

- Politically, it's a shame that a real problem is addressed via scapegoating

- Practically, it will have little effect since REIT's and home builders are sitting on a lot of inventory that they can't sell, so they've stopped accumulating (and they're resorting to secondary offerings to pay off the original investors). Indeed, to the extent this stimulates buying, they're all for it.

- Ethically, the US has been a magnet for money laundering, much of it via real estate, which has pushed up asset prices and de-conditioned professionals. Scapegoating only delays reform.