Large investors are a real piece of the imbalance, and a smaller one than the headlines suggest. In most markets, institutional and corporate buyers come nowhere near the 20 to 30 percent of transactions people often assume. Their footprint is real, and they collect a disproportionate share of the blame. Where they do concentrate, like Phoenix, it's usually because relocation and rental demand plus attractive yields make it appealing for large funds to keep deploying cash as an inflation hedge. And every home an investor takes off the market is one fewer for an owner-occupant at a time when supply is already tight, so even a modest share stings. On whether anything is being done: honestly, not much, and sweeping restrictions are unlikely in a free-market system where corporate and fund money carries real political weight. Two natural counterweights exist, though: - Institutional owners generally miss out on the tax advantages owner-occupants get in many states, such as homestead protections. - The most promising idea we've heard is a tax incentive that rewards sellers who sell to an owner-occupant, especially a buyer who doesn't already own other real estate. That tilts the field toward regular buyers without making anything illegal.