Ok, now factor in all the millenials and gen z living at home while working. Or other under-housed invididuals.
With real estate, there is inherently time in which it lays empty between tenants moving in and out or being sold. When a place like California has over a million of vacant homes, that still makes for a vacancy rate below the "natural vacancy rate"!
The other big category of vacant housing is in places that are depopulating due to lack of jobs. We could be giving decaying homes in the Rust Belt, but they'd be more of a liability to the new owner than anything else.
This whole fabrication thing is a biiig chokepoint.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_War:_The_Fight_for_the_...