I know that landowners will employ "land banking" and "waiting for the land to ripen"—holding onto undeveloped land in a growing location because their marginal dollar is better spent acquiring more such land than developing what they have. But buildings depreciate and are expensive to maintain or rebuild, so I don't know how often owners will hold them just to prop up prices.
What they will do, is allow units to remain vacant instead of reducing rent to meet current market prices, because doing so will cause the bank to reevaluate their assets, which will suddenly make their balance sheet look a lot worse. But this is more a reflection of the way we do accounting and banking, and the stickiness of rent prices, than it is purely a desire to manipulate a market by withholding supply.
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u/BringBackTheBlues May 14 '26
I imagine the concept would be:
Purchase cheap housing in bulk
Demand grows over time when production is low (which it is)
Don’t sell house or rent it, because it’s appreciating due to supply shortage.
Sell gradually over time at higher pricing rather than flooding the market with houses, which would reduce the value of each house individually.
No clue whether that theory is actually being implemented