I mean, individually it's just a poor investment choice. But individuals trying to live in their investment properties isn't really the problem.

The modern housing supply crisis is definitely egged on by a handful of mega-funds that can snap up houses en mass at prices which are already inflated. I'm living next to an aspiring AirBnB landlord's newest acquisition as I speak. Very unlikely she's coming out ahead after a year of renting relative to just holding NVIDIA or Tesla. She's definitely not getting any extra houses under her belt at this rate.

But I might suggest that the "supply crisis" is much more an "unemployment crisis", as the gross supply of housing isn't in shortage. It's the location of the housing, relative to the centers of new commerce.

Case in point, Elon Musk is dumping billions of dollars into Bastrop, to rapidly develop an area that's been overgrazed farmland for centuries. Then, when neighborhoods in Cincinnati and Detroit and even San Antonio have a relative glut of saleable real estate. The... ethnic composition of Bastrop has provided a level of appeal. But so has the pliability of the local government, which has historically been run by libertarian dipshits who spend all their time complaining about the neighboring Austin, TX college kids and granola crunching hippies while insisting deregulation and tax cuts are the only viable pathways to growth.

Now Musk has delivered on the growth, but he's cut out all the locals from its benefit. He's standing up his own little Network State of employee-exclusive bars, storefronts, and housing stocks, while driving long-time residents out with the sudden flood of noise and traffic.

Big investors and employers are engaged in all sorts of regulatory arbitrage and capital flight, often for very shortsighted ego-stroking gains, in order to secure an ideological end goal rather than a profitable business model. The end result is massive shiny new suburban development sometimes directly neighboring areas blighted by economic neglect. People complaining about skyrocketing housing costs who live spitting distance from some of the cheapest real estate available, entirely because of modern day redlining and private segregation.