Comment by epistasis
4 days ago
Thanks for that! I guess I don't see how there could be market manipulation without also damaging the manipulator, especially in a market that is as transparent as housing, with nearly every sale being at a public price.
Rental manipulation is much much easier, and probably more prevalent. But unfortunately the price-gouging lawsuits from using software to share pricing information have been settled with the landlords paying peanuts.
I'm not sure deliberate manipulation per se, but the market would be warped by a single participant that owned 4% of the aggregate market. This is especially true if that participant didn't adhere to the normal holding periods and purchasing rationale as the remainder of the market participants. Consider that market manipulation concerns are (some of) the reasons significant holders (>= 5%) of even extremely liquid public companies are required to publicly report ownership and ownership changes.
Maybe if they keep buying the houses in the top school district of the entire city. Which I've never heard of anyone doing.
Maybe easier to just form a realtor cartel?
This assumes that the entire market is for sale at a given time, which is not true. If you have 3 kids and two parents who need to drive to work, there may be only a single digit number of viable houses for sale at a given time in your school district.