At least in the US, zoning laws and parking minimums have really restricted the ability of cities to build more housing in high demand areas. Look at how much space is wasted just for surface parking lots in downtown Denver, Houston, Austin, etc... Name almost any bigger city and soooo much valuable land is wasted on cars.

I also agree that real estate should not be used as an investment. If there was more restrictions around owning property in cities, that would certainly help. AirBnB/short term rentals are definitely not helping and should be heavily regulated/taxed.

All of it leads back to zoning laws preventing more housing being built, and of the correct types. Most of that is caused by NIMBY types worried about the character of the neighborhood, and perhaps a bit of bigotry. It IS supply and demand, and short supply is caused by bad policymaking that nobody really benefits from.

Zoning laws: yes, strong agree, but the bad guy there isn't corporations, it's NIMBYs. People with houses don't want any development of any kind near them, and being residents they're the ones who get to vote on it. They almost always vote no.

Foreign people buying land as assets is a thing. You know how you defeat that? Build more housing. If the value of the assets fails to rise, or even falls, then people won't hold them as assets--and by dumping them on the market, they'll further decrease the price.

Companies buying up houses to sell (usually after developing or refurbishing them) or rent is ECON101 in action.

If you can solve problem #1, the rest falls into place. But corner apartments overlooking the water in nice cities are still going to be expensive relative to other housing.