I am not a housing investor, but I see many misguided articles claiming housing investors are driving prices up.
The factors that primarily control pricing in the housing market are supply and demand.
In Seattle, London, Los Angeles and elsewhere demand has risen steadily but supply has not. This causes prices to increase sharply.
The solution is to increase the housing supply. If the government removes regulations preventing developers from building new houses and apartments, many more will be built and prices will drop.
Many young people prefer to live in inexpensive high density housing. I remember looking at renting an apartment without a kitchen (there was a big shared kitchen for the whole floor) and without its own bathroom in my early twenties. Monthly rental price on this is around $300 per month as compared to $1,600 for a single bedroom apartment. Why aren’t there more of these? Government regulation prevents them from being built.
Government permitting processes take years to go through and cost millions of dollars for big new apartment buildings or for residential developments. If we lighten / remove these regulations, housing supply will decrease dramatically.
If you don’t want housing investors bidding up housing prices, then allow the supply to continuously increase. This will continuously drive down prices and no investors will want to buy.