By what mechanism would (2) make housing cheaper?
Example: https://www.propublica.org/article/when-private-equity-becom...
Also Adam Smith has a lot of rants against rent seeking behavior and landlords if you want to go with that "communist" writing.
> The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give
Funnily enough, check how far back the 1/3 income for rent comes from and the context on which it is mentioned:
> The rent of an estate above ground commonly amounts to what is supposed to be a third of the gross produce; and it is generally a rent certain and independent of the occasional variations in the crop. [..] This rent “is seldom less than a fourth ... of the whole produce.”
A simple rule is that nothing people blame on corporations is ever caused by corporations. People and governments are legitimately more powerful than corporations! And they often use that for evil.
In a country of 330 million people.
3.6% of apartment units are owned by private equity.
https://ourfinancialsecurity.org/2022/06/letters-to-congress...