Those property developers are taking on a considerable amount of inventory risk. One hiccup in the housing market and they go bankrupt. If that’s the game they are willing to play, then so be it.
Or to buying up enough aluminum that you can hoard it.
Or owning enough land that you choose the price.
When you control the supply of an essential resource, you can name your price. Great way to make money, terrible way to make a society.
The trend for cities in the past 75 years has been to down some continuously until there's not enough spare land that's zoned to account for the necessary population growth. Then, in that highly supply constrained environment, use political processes to upzone only a tiny amount of land. Typically this is the "blight," the few places that minorities where allowed to live when racist deed restrictions were allowed, the areas where city services were less, and that stayed that way.
Societies would take the most undervalued land, force the huge backed up pressure into these vulnerable neighborhoods, and let the few lucky developers that were politically savvy enough to navigate the process make away with the profits.
Now that it's everywhere, there will be more competition between developers and there will be far less exploitation of an artificially restricted resource. Land is already restricted enough, zoning for density just makes it all the more scarce and exploitable by the powerful.
Hoping I’m wrong, but the last few decades’ antics with investors tells me I’m not.
If the existing capital holders build a bunch of rentals, then many of those goals are not possible.
There are external risks. In the case of XBox, Microsoft can either unexpectedly increase supply or the demand can be lower than expected.