[quote=CA renter]
As for food, you can grow your own food, buy it from a farmer, import it from another country, etc. If a grocery chain (or group of grocery chains) decided to make it illegal for people to grow their own food, buy from farmers, or import it from other places; and/or if they forced people to have to buy food only from their stores, then it would be similar to what’s going on with the housing market and specuvestors. [/quote]

Actually in your example, the grocery store is the specuvestor buying from the farmer.

And no group of investors is capable of forcing anybody to buy their stuff short of a monopoly. There is no monopoly in housing.

And ironically, it’s no different than government taxes, just move if you don’t like it. 🙂

All that said, I think it will be interesting as the big money players exit at some point in the future. Or not, they may turn SoCal into the land of the rentals.