It might not solve the problem but we also have other countries buying up homes for pension accounts. Take AU for example doing this. Should be illegal regardless of the size.
Pension funds don't do that (it's a headache).
Instead, they allocate a certain amount of capital to funds specialized in Real Estate who will invest in real estate firms like Greystar who are forced to maximize revenue.
Much of the financialization people keep complaining about on HN is because institutional investors are now much more demanding in comparison to 40 years ago when institutional investing meant putting all your money in bonds and a bit of domestic stocks and hoping to get a 5-6% return.
Basically, the Yale, OTPPF, and ADIA model goes brrrrrrr as institutional investors now demand double digit returns.