In those cases the professionals are making money using people's dreams of becoming wealthy to sell books and seminars. Learn the One Simple Trick to turn your high salary into lasting wealth that Wall Street doesn't want you to know.
In the cases you cited where corporations are buying homes, yeah, there are firms that do a lot of quantitative research and forecasting and identify homes that they think are underpriced according to their rental value, ignoring the vast majority of properties on the market. If you're in a community they've identified as being underpriced, I guess it can look like they're buying up the whole world, but it's a selective strategy, completely different from the blanket assumption that property is an easy doorway to wealth and riches. As one of those articles notes, they don't compete against "wealthy boomers and the nation’s finance and tech bros," because we're willing to pay silly prices for property. They buy in neighborhoods where people like us aren't looking.
