re: Housing market not cooling off at all

Well I'm assuming the way it works is this.

Private investment firms buy real estate property with combo of equity and debt. They rent said properties to individuals/families as housing, earning income.

They also simultaneously package said properties into a financial instrument and market them, with a proportion of the rents earned assigned to the investors ala a coupon or dividend. But the proportion of rents paid to investors are far lower than what the companies are making off of selling the derivatives.

The firms are making profits on both the rental and capital market sides, with said profits being re-invested to buy up additional properties.

The market is being propped up by the same companies buying more properties with their profits, which only works because of the retail investors. The vast majority of rental properties are nowhere near profitable enough to do such post-taxes, depreciation, repairs, loss of capital/debt availability tied up in the property, etc.