Professional property managers can scale the cost of ownership in a way individual owners can’t.

Besides that speculators can also withhold supply, artificially inflating prices. 2008 occurred due to speculation, independent of NIMBY regulation.

As for crypto, housing can actually be more profitable than crypto since investors see rentier income not just speculative appreciation.

Ultimately, this isn't just a supply-and-demand problem in an idealized market. It's a resource allocation issue where investors with significant capital can hoard housing, driving up costs, while many people struggle with homelessness. Simply greasing the market with deregulation won't solve this fundamental imbalance.

Unfortunately deregulating them will do much the same. BlackRock promotes YIMBY because that will allow it to expand its rental property portfolio, effectively generating new cashflows from the poor and middle class to wealthy asset owners. In fact deregulation/regulation is a false choice. Cashflow should go in the opposite direction by raises taxing on the wealthy (including real estate investments) and building public housing.