The absolute majority of laundry is happening in 100% legal banks, and investment funds. Any baddie who can launder few billion dollars, can buy a bank completely legally.
I don't have numbers but I'll suggest that even if real estate is a small fraction of all money laundering (and I agree with you about banks), if even a percent or two of manhattan real estate supply is held up in schemes that could make a big impact on price. I know AirBnB always catches blame for skyrocketing rent, while in any city they represent a vanishly small portion of housing stock, for sure outnumbered by vacant units. [actually it occurs to me that renting units for exorbitant prices on airbnb to ghost clientele would be a decent money laundering scheme, no?]
(For example, in San Francisco there are ~5000 listings on AirBnB [0], while ~40,000 homes sit vacant [1], for a population of what, 800,000 ?)
So a small change in housing supply can have a big effect on cost of housing, which is why I expect people are clamoring for a crack down.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20210720175121/https://www.magni...
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/how-many-vacant-homes...