return to table of content

DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

lukev
123 replies
3d1h

Some quotes from the filing:

Discussing a different RealPage product, another landlord said: “I always liked this product because your algorithm uses proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and term. That’s classic price fixing . . . .”

In fact, as RealPage’s Vice President of Revenue Management Advisory Services described, “there is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down”

Its executives are blunt: They want landlords to “avoid the race to the bottom in down markets.” Sometimes RealPage is even more direct, acknowledging that its software is aimed at “driving every possible opportunity to increase price”
Carrok
110 replies
3d1h

industry

The fact that providing people with housing is even seen as an "industry" is a big sign of what is wrong with the world right now.

It is essential to living a decent life.

It should not be a driver of lining the pockets of people who are already rich.

Manuel_D
86 replies
3d1h

Do you want to invest tens of millions of dollars into building an apartment with zero expectations of making a return? If there's no profit to be made in building housing, why would anyone want to build housing? This line of thinking is what leads to situations like San Francisco, where price controls on housing lead to few developers willing to build there.

If it's proven that landlords colluded to fix prices, that should be addressed. But the reality is, prices are only going up in a select few metros. And it's because lots of people want to live in those areas, which leads to rising demand which has not been satisfied by new housing construction. People desperately want to believe that there's a silver bullet that will bring prices down without actually addressing the mismatch between supply and demand.

toomuchtodo
28 replies
3d1h

Profits are fine, excessive profits at the cost of people who need housing are not. There is no silver bullet, but increasing supply along with strong regulation to protect renters is welcome vs them being cattle to be squeezed by for profit entities. Human rights are a thing, there is no right to profit.

The six largest publicly traded apartment companies in the U.S. — all of which are linked to an alleged rental price-fixing scandal — experienced profit increases during the first three months of the year, according to an analysis from left-leaning watchdog group Accountable US exclusively shared with The Hill.

In the analysis, the companies earned a combined $300 million in profit during the first quarter of the year, in part, due to rent increases.

Lots of profit to squeeze out with regulation, based on the evidence. The Vienna model is a proven model if for profit enterprises walk away from housing.

https://thehill.com/business/housing/4718252-large-apartment...

https://accountable.us/report-top-corporate-landlords-see-pr...

Manuel_D
12 replies
3d1h

The phrase "protect renters" is often used as a dogwhistle for price controls. For example, rent control and affordable housing mandates that require a certain % of units to be rented at below market rates. Can you elaborate on what exactly you're referring to here?

toomuchtodo
8 replies
3d1h

This would be an unproductive use of time. It is very clear you are pro "no regulation" around housing (based on your thread comments, "just build more"), so a heated argument with the potential for the subthread to be detached by dang does none of us any good. I'm not here to change your belief system, and to attempt to do so would provide no meaningful impact to macro outcomes.

Manuel_D
7 replies
3d1h

All I'm asking you to do is list the specific laws or regulation you're referring to here when you write about the need to "protect renters". I don't know if we agree or disagree, because you haven't actually stated what your beliefs are.

I definitely support regulations around housing: housind needs to be safe (fire exits, sprinklers, etc.). Landlords can't engage in deceptive practices, like putting up ads for one unit and giving the tenant a different one. Units should be promptly repaired. Landlords shouldn't discriminate on the basis of protected class. I could go on.

toomuchtodo
6 replies
3d

Dynamic price control of rents to prevent them from accelerating beyond what wages can support (existing tenants win vs potential new market entrants, them the breaks when supply is catching up to demand or cannot meet demand), tenant rights with strong local regulatory oversight, government incentives to encourage a diverse ecosystem of suppliers bringing new supply onto the market based on forecasted market demand (cost of capital, regulatory streamlining support, construction labor pipeline, etc), upzoning whenever possible to encourage density as much as reasonable.

Supplier diversity is needed to prevent use of market power to restrict new supply coming online to hold rents higher than they otherwise would be (strong evidence homebuilders are doing this current state, restricting supply to juice profitability). The rest should be self explanatory. As you said, there is no silver bullet; it is various policy measures working in concert to attempt to arrive at a desired outcome. I am not anti profits, I am anti "gouge the human for basic needs for profits."

TLDR Some profits? Okay. Too much profit? Not okay. People living in constant fear of not having a home? Not okay. Build, build, build.

(am a landlord myself, do not raise rents unless actual costs go up, reduce rents when needed by tenants, keep my profits reasonable [~%6-%10], usually no more than $100/month/door)

Manuel_D
2 replies
3d

Okay, so I was right: "protect renters" was indeed referring to price controls. Price controls coupled with what sounds like blatantly nativist policy:

Dynamic price control of rents to prevent them from accelerating beyond what wages can support (existing tenants win vs potential new market entrants...

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "existing tenants win vs potential new market entrants"? Does this mean that landlords must rent at lower rates to someone who has lived in SF for some time, versus an immigrant that is willing to pay higher rents?

medvezhenok
1 replies
2d16h

I think GP is pretty clearly implying more akin to Prop 13 but for renters (i.e. Prop 13 locks in increase in property taxes to 2% a year), this policy would do something similar for rent.

It benefits existing renters because new entrants (new renters) would have to pay market price, but existing renters might be behind market rent if market rents are increasing too quickly. Same way that Prop 13 works.

Dynamic in the sense that it's not fixed at 2% but tied to some sort of variable index (San Diego for example does CPI + 5% with a hard cap of 10% YoY increase I believe)

Manuel_D
0 replies
2d15h

I think GP is pretty clearly implying more akin to Prop 13 but for renters (i.e. Prop 13 locks in increase in property taxes to 2% a year), this policy would do something similar for rent.

It's called rent control. That's literally describing the existing rent control policies in SF: rent is fixes save for an extremely minor increase around 2%. Allowing a fixed price increase is still a form of price controls.

I really want the previous comment to elaborate on this:

existing tenants win vs potential new market entrants
RhodesianHunter
1 replies
3d

Dynamic price control of rents

How many economics studies, from all schools of economic thought, across 100 years of research need to prove that price controls don't work before people start accepting that fact?

orwin
0 replies
2d21h

I mean dynamic price control works in most French cities. The exception is Paris, but they tried a static price control for no reason (also, non-market housing supply is diminishing, which is a bad thing. Capitals with 30 to 40% non-market housing are doing extremely well usually)

cloverich
0 replies
2d22h

prevent them from accelerating beyond what wages can support

In practice what does this mean? If landlords raise rents beyond what people can pay... doesn't that mean they lose tenants? If they do not lose tenants, then by definition doesn't it mean they have not raised rents beyond what people can pay?

0x457
2 replies
3d

For example, rent control and affordable housing mandates that require a certain % of units to be rented at below market rates.

The issue that we have here - market rates controlled by RealPage. Since everyone uses RealPage, in terms of price for renters it's essentially the same as if every building was owned by the same company.

I'm appalled how long it took for this lawsuit to be filed. We knew about this price fixing for quite some time.

Manuel_D
1 replies
3d

Apparently, RealPage only serves 10% of the rental market in San Francisco: https://jacobin.com/2024/08/realpage-software-housing-landlo...

The company has reported that it provides these services to 10 percent of the rental market in San Francisco.

RealPage doesn't have nearly enough market share to engage in price-fixing. If it tried, its units would stay vacant as other renters flock to the 90% of units that aren't using RealPage.

medvezhenok
0 replies
2d16h

Sure, but what matters is what percentage of the apartments with vacancies RealPage controls. Many apartments don't turn over year-to-year, so that 10 percent might or might not be misleading.

itake
9 replies
3d1h

strong regulation increases costs (see all the permits and surveys required in SF).

What are "excessive profits"? 10%? 15%? 25%?

experienced profit increases during the first three months of the year

Does this even mean anything? This could mean their vacancy rate decreased and thus their business is more profitable. I don't see the issue with companies reducing vacancies and providing more housing to more people.

toomuchtodo
5 replies
3d1h

I cannot say, but experts can, and suggest to legislators and regulators implementation details. To operate a business in a jurisdiction is a privilege, not an entitlement.

itake
4 replies
3d1h

I'd love to see the data on this. Usually when you increase construction costs, via additional regulation, you're going to increase the price of rent/sale.

What expert thinks increasing costs will lower prices?

toomuchtodo
3 replies
3d1h

It's the other way around. Regulation around pricing forces housing providers to provide housing within a constrained cost model (land + materials + labor + cost of capital + permitting/AHJ requirements [regulation]). If they cannot meet the market (or choose not to, for whatever reason), public housing is an option, with muni bonds issued to finance construction. This removes the profit component, which a for profit enterprise needs, but public housing does not.

itake
2 replies
3d1h

where does the public housing come from? WA and CA can't seem to figure out how to build public housing. In WA, the best I've seen is the gov buying hotels and having the hotel sit empty for years [0].

If regulations make it impossible to build housing and public housing has the same regulations, who is paying that bill? The existing residents via sales and property taxes?

you can google construction costs in sf. how does regulations reduce any of those numbers?

[0] - https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/king-county-taxpayers-payin...

Manuel_D
1 replies
3d

Washington has at least done a better job than San Francisco. Seattle has built over twice (IIRC three) times as many homes per-capita than SF over the last decade, despite lower population. The fact that rent control is banned statewide has a big role to play there.

robertlagrant
0 replies
2d23h

It's not "despite" lower population. The thing that drives the costs up isn't evil landlords or the dreaded "profit motive". It's just demand massively outstripping supply, and high wages.

tossandthrow
2 replies
3d1h

The natural interest rate plus a bit.

If you can earn 25% percent in profits in the current environment then it is a clear indication of an inefficient market - a market that needs to be regulated in order to create efficiency (like in this case as with many other cases: remove monopolistic behavior).

While it is problematic if you can't derive profits from productive activities it is also problematic when entities derive unsustainable profits - also for the party deriving the profits.

If there is not a bit middle class to consume products, then there will not be be a market to supply products to.

schrectacular
1 replies
3d

Targeting profit rarely helps. The big players can afford the financial engineers to make the profits negligible from an accounting perspective. Likely funneled into growth. The small players cannot, so you put them in a situation where selling to a big player is rational. And the oligopoly grows.

tossandthrow
0 replies
3d

The current economic environment definitely over indexes on very abstract metrics to steer, which is problematic.

I am also not proposing any formal system.

I am saying that it is quite easy to spot profits that are too high.

I am also saying that the governments role is to ensure efficient markets.

In this case it is suing RealPage.

It could also be making it easier to make housing in a specific area to counter under supply.

it is all regulation.

ZoomerCretin
2 replies
2d23h

Do you feel the same way about food production? Should we ban food production for profit and make people starve until someone decides to work for free to produce enough food for everyone to eat once again?

Or how about cars? Let's ban profit on cars. That'll make them cheaper, right?

toomuchtodo
1 replies
2d23h

I support price regulation when called for. Your hyperbole is...not congruent with reality, considering the incredible agriculture subsidies provided and automobile tariffs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/economists...

https://www.ncsl.org/financial-services/price-gouging-state-...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

From a paid Matt Stoller BIG (https://thebignewsletter.com/) piece on monopoly pricing:

Something real is going on. In individual markets, CEOs have been bragging publicly that they are restraining production to increase prices. Profit margins in the food industry jumped during Covid and haven’t come back down. Or take rent. There’s a company called RealPage that works with the biggest corporate landlords to hold apartments empty so they can increase prices, which jumped up 11% in 2022. There’s some evidence of conspiracy around pricing in virtually every industry. Turkey, poultry, and pork. Frozen french fries. PVC pipe. Anesthesiology. Oil. Ammunition. Pharmaceuticals. K-Pop. Credit bureaus and FICO, Verisign, industrial gasses, architectural software, locks, entertainment data. Homebuilders. Garden chemicals. Defense and aerospace. Ticketing. Estate Sales. Gaming. Drug wholesaling. Work ID information. Seeds and chemicals.

Laws to crack down on this behavior has popular support, so I won't spend additional time defending the idea in this forum, as it is unnecessary.

https://blueprint2024.com/polling/inflation-poll-06-25/

https://blueprint2024.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screens...

The most popular policies are calling on all states to suspend taxes on groceries (68% selected), cracking down on overcharging by hospitals (66%), starting a congressional committee to hold hearings on and investigate price gouging and overcharging by corporations (63%), requiring public utilities to cut rates for electricity (63%), reducing the deficit by cutting spending (62%), and prosecuting price gougers (61%).
ZoomerCretin
0 replies
2d22h

I support price regulation when called for. Your hyperbole is...not congruent with reality, considering the incredible agriculture subsidies provided and automobile tariffs.

The outrageous profiteering in food and groceries is not with the hyper-subsidized agriculture industry that grows food and raises livestock, but up the supply chain in the middle-men who buy this to process and package it (especially meatpacking). Consumers, farmers, and grocers would all be served if the monopolies that absorb massive food profits were busted.

Something real is going on. In individual markets, CEOs have been bragging publicly that they are restraining production to increase prices. Profit margins in the food industry jumped during Covid and haven’t come back down. Or take rent. There’s a company called RealPage that works with the biggest corporate landlords to hold apartments empty so they can increase prices, which jumped up 11% in 2022. There’s some evidence of conspiracy around pricing in virtually every industry. Turkey, poultry, and pork. Frozen french fries. PVC pipe. Anesthesiology. Oil. Ammunition. Pharmaceuticals. K-Pop. Credit bureaus and FICO, Verisign, industrial gasses, architectural software, locks, entertainment data. Homebuilders. Garden chemicals. Defense and aerospace. Ticketing. Estate Sales. Gaming. Drug wholesaling. Work ID information. Seeds and chemicals.

Sounds like the real solution to this problem is the same solution to the housing market: Too many laws preventing new entrants, which prevents natural competition from lowering prices.

The problem is the needless and protectionist laws and regulations. If you want to see the effectiveness of monopoly regulation, look at California's PG&E vs Texas' deregulated electricity provider market. Californians are paying outrageous bills, meanwhile Texans have their choice of paying different electricity providers, and thus have much lower electric rates.

SmartJerry
1 replies
2d20h

Excessive profits are actually the catalyst for competition. THe cycle of capitalism and free markets looks like this: earn excess profits -> people build more supply -> prices come down and excess profits dry up -> people stop building -> earn excess profits. When you fix the 'prices come down and excess profits dry up' all you get is people stop building.

medvezhenok
0 replies
2d16h

That works in a well functioning, liquid market. If there are barriers to entry for new competitors (like regulatory hurdles, or zoning), this free-market theory falls flat on its face.

kelnos
13 replies
3d1h

This line of thinking is what leads to situations like San Francisco, where price controls on housing lead to few developers willing to build there.

Not sure what "price controls" you're talking about, but the reason it's expensive to build in SF (which reduces the appeal for builders) is zoning, the byzantine planning process, the ability of local residents to effectively block or delay projects, and weaponized environmental review.

Do you want to invest tens of millions of dollars into building an apartment with zero expectations of making a return?

Building housing doesn't need to be an investment opportunity. In a better world, I'm sure there would be plenty of people who would be happy to build housing with only enough profit to pay employees a comfortable wage. These sorts of people don't have the ability to break into the industry, though.

Alupis
8 replies
3d

Why is this viewed as a problem?

The people living in SF and it's surrounding areas clearly want things the way they are. Who are we to force them to build "affordable" housing just because we think it might be good?

"We", mostly being people who don't even live in SF...

Do the tax payers of SF not get a say in how their community is managed? Are we now advocating people have a "right" to live in SF despite it's cost or something? How does that work in reality, and most importantly, why?

tacticalturtle
2 replies
2d23h

It’s a problem when every town/municipality thinks like this, and then larger state- wide governments are faced with the dilemma of an angry voting population tired of high housing costs.

You can either get ahead of a state-wide solution and implement something where you have some control that works for your community, or you can do nothing and wait for the state government to begin to remove zoning from local control.

Alupis
1 replies
2d22h

High rent costs are not something a town/municipality can solve. In a most ways, it's also something a state government cannot solve.

"High" rent is relative to the area, and rent is high across the entire country currently.

Lack of rental housing drives up rental prices. The lack of rental housing is largely due to unnaturally low interest rates. People qualified for oversized loans, and bought up the rental supply, converting them into homes instead.

Since cash was easy to acquire via loans, this resulted in an unprecedented period of time where housing prices were driven upwards with near-zero limiting factor. That was the market where people were overbidding asking-price by $50K+ without even seeing the house... that was/is a very unnatural market. This bidding process resulted in significantly overvalued homes, which made them inaccessible to lower-income people. So the rental market shrunk significantly, and housing prices went through the roof... then runaway inflation came knocking, making everything that much worse.

Which is to say, all of this is the creation of poor federal policy, and there isn't much your state or city can do about it.

Manuel_D
0 replies
2d20h

No, rent is not high across the entire country. It's high in a select few metros, and fairly low everywhere else. Municipalities can't unilaterally reduce rents, but the can exacerbate the problem by disincentivizing housing through regulation and price controls.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
2 replies
3d

True, just as people from Mexico don't have a right to live in the rich and nice USA, people from the sticks don't have a right to live in the rich and nice SF.

pessimizer
0 replies
2d23h

People from Mexico don't have a right to live in the USA, any more than people from the USA have a right to live in Mexico; and the people moving into SF and complaining have top 3% incomes.

Alupis
0 replies
3d

A right is a power or privilege held by the general public, usually as the result of a constitution, statute, regulation, or judicial precedent[1]

Nobody has a "right" to live in SF. If you can afford SF, then nothing is stopping you.

You do have a right to live, but you do not have a right to live in a particular area.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right#:~:text=A%20right%20is....

ZoomerCretin
1 replies
2d23h

Zoning restrictions in just three cities (San Francisco, San Jose, and New York) are responsible for all of the United States' GDP being lower by double-digit percentage.

It is in the interest of the entire country that these regions be forced to allow maximum housing development, because it will raise incomes across the entire country.

Do the tax payers of SF not get a say in how their community is managed?

We know why zoning density restrictions exist, because their birth place was across the bay in Berkeley, whose proponents loudly extolled its benefits in pushing out anyone who was not White. This was the original intent of getting a say in development: to prevent undesirable racial minorities from moving in next door.

San Francisco weaponized housing density restrictions to push black people out of Haight-Ashbury, and to this day, continues to fight any and all housing development that might reverse this grave injustice.

ZoomerCretin
0 replies
2d21h

Found it: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~moretti/growth.pdf

If New York and the Bay Area alone relaxed their zoning, their GDP would be 33% higher, and US GDP would be 3.7% higher (as of 2009), and national average income would be $3,685 higher.

Manuel_D
2 replies
3d

Policy restricting housing is indeed another factor impeding housing. The price controls I'm referring to are rent controls (which applies to ~70% of apartments in SF, and the threat of reintroducing rent controls looms) and affordable housing mandates. The affordable housing mandates require that a certain percentage of units are rented at set prices.

Again, if housing isn't an investment opportunity, then why would anyone build new housing? Sometimes people get together and build co-ops. But those are rare, and it's only available to people with a lot of capital on-hand. Plus, it runs the risk of the project going over-budget.

asadotzler
1 replies
2d18h

Lots of businesses make less than stock market index returns. You can be a builder that doesn't want to beat the S&P and still support your family doing it. Not everything has to be about massive accumulation of wealth or "growth at all costs". Plenty of people are OK doing a day's work for a day's creature comforts and leaving it at that.

Manuel_D
0 replies
2d18h

Sure you can deliberately invest in a way that doesn't generate the best returns. You can be a philanthropist and build housing for free! But the vast majority of people are indeed looking to maximize returns.

amy-petrik-214
0 replies
2d18h

price controls is rent control. SF. see also: NYC "you can raise rent by X% per year AT MOST, no more than that" if inflation / supply/demand is >X%, the landlord eats it. Thus landlording might be for some, more appealing elsewhere.

Cali also has prop 13 i.e. rent control on real estate taxes. So if I bought my house in 1955, I might pay $100/year in property tax, the guy who just bought a completely identical house next door this year might pay $15,000 a year in property tax. On basically the same house. How is that fair? kinda a boomer "I got mine" type mentality. Also part of the bay area real estate problem, in addition to zoning/byzantine planning, borken process - why would anyone want to move out?!? Moving out would mean +$15,000/year tax, every year. Just stay put.

Of note in Singapore there's not really the concept of "apartment building" business and it works fine (very dense NYC tier housing there). The reason why is the more "units" you own, taxes become progressively more brutal, an apartment building would be tax armageddon. So most rentals are a person who owns a few condo type units and rents them, few enough that taxes aren't bad. Most people aim for owning, and for owning there is a private sector but a public government sector that provides home at more reasonable prices with various perks and incentives. That's how to handle housing when you've got tons and tons of people and almost no land.

Carrok
10 replies
3d1h

If price controls on housing exist in SF but not elsewhere, and this causes developers to not build there, then the issue is not that price controls exist in SF. The issue is that price controls do not exist elsewhere.

Set the same price controls across the entire nation, suddenly there is no disincentive to not build in any one area.

margalabargala
7 replies
3d1h

You appear to be making an incorrect assumption that there is some consistent amount of housing which will be built each year, and the question is only how to distribute it among different localities.

That's not the case. If you add the same price controls everywhere, then the same near-zero housing gets built everywhere.

Construction companies will shut down, they will not continue paying people to build housing at a loss.

Carrok
6 replies
3d1h

You appear to be making an incorrect assumption that price controls must be so onerous that they will result in zero new housing being built.

margalabargala
2 replies
2d23h

You appear to be making an incorrect assumption that I said "zero new housing". I did not. I said near-zero.

In your comment you explicitly specified that the whole country should adopt the same price controls as SF.

SF's price controls are sufficiently onerous that nearly no new housing is built there.

Carrok
1 replies
2d23h

In your comment you explicitly specified that the whole country should adopt the same price controls as SF.

I absolutely did not say this.

I said "Set the same price controls across the entire nation", which means one set of consistent price controls for the country, not the existing set of price controls that SF currently has.

Perhaps I should have worded it as "Set a consistent set of price controls across the entire nation".

margalabargala
0 replies
2d23h

That's fair. The wording of your comment (heavily, honestly) implies setting SF's policies nationwide, but rereading I can see how it can be read the other way.

You're correct, "Set a consistent set of price controls across the entire nation" is a much better wording.

RhodesianHunter
2 replies
3d

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm genuinely curious. Have you ever read the economics literature on price controls?

Alupis
1 replies
3d

They have not... and unfortunately this viewpoint is shared by too many these days.

Removing the profit-motive from the equation does not magically net increased benefits for everyone. It's usually the opposite in reality... landlords end up doing the absolute bare minimum because sinking a bunch of money into renovating the bathrooms or kitchen will not yield increased rent under these proposed policies. Or people looking to invest in housing/apartments for rental income decide it's ROI is far too low to be worth the hassle and risks... so less housing is built.

This line of thinking looks at some minority of people living in slums, and assumes every rental owner is actually a slumlord. So, the solution is obviously to degrade the situation for everyone because some small minority of people have it rough...

orwin
0 replies
2d20h

I mean, did you read Diamond, McQuade, and Qian? Or newer studies? It should be the minimum to read before talking about rent control effect (with Autor, Palmer, and Pathak) because people tend to cite 'Friedman', who _never_ empirically worked on this subject. I mean, I understand liberals/Libertarians seems to love pure reason, but I hope people on this website are more scientifically minded. Experience is always better than models, no?

[edit] anyway, rent-control on market housing do not work, but limited non-market housing do apply downward market pressure, even when done poorly and unplanned (as shown by AP&P study)

Quinner
0 replies
3d1h

Suddenly there's no incentive to build in all areas.

Manuel_D
0 replies
3d1h

Set the price controls across the nation, and developers will redirect their money towards something other than residential real estate. It's frankly disappointing to see this faulty thinking on HN. Price controls fundamentally disrupt the feedback loop between supply and demand. If you limit the profit to be made on building housing, you're disincentivizing it from being built.

Imagine a county is in the middle of a famine, and the government in a few provinces set price controls on food. The famine worsens in those provinces. Is the problem helped by setting price controls nationwide?

raincom
5 replies
3d1h

Realpage is involved in a vicious loop, not a virtuous loop. Even in the Bay Area, corporate landlords jack up rent like 10% every year, whereas small landlords are happy to raise rent by 3%. That's the difference due to algorithmic collusion set and controlled by RealPage.

Manuel_D
4 replies
3d1h

How are the corporate landlords able to rent their units if the small landlords are selling equal quality units for substantially less? Wouldn't everyone just rent from the small landlords while the corporate apartments stay vacant? This is the hole in the price-fixing argument: price-fixing only works when everyone is onboard, otherwise the parties not involved in price fixing will gobble up the market share.

I wouldn't be surprised if corporate-run apartments are more expensive. They're are usually renting much nicer buildings with amenities like air conditioning, parcel delivery rooms, gated parking, etc.

Carrok
1 replies
3d

Wouldn't everyone just rent from the small landlords while the corporate apartments stay vacant?

If there was enough supply, they absolutely would.

They're are usually renting much nicer buildings with amenities like air conditioning, parcel delivery rooms, gated parking, etc.

It sure sounds like you've never rented. This is, in the vast majority of cases, not reality.

Manuel_D
0 replies
3d

Exactly: prices are rising because there isn't enough supply to satisfy demand.

I have, in fact, rented in San Francisco. I rented from a small landlord in a building that had no A/C, no package room, no parking. I had to fix my refrigerator and shower mixer myself because she barely spoke English. But it was a cheap apartment! I also rented from a corporate landlord. It had a lot of amenities like a gym, a package room, and parking. But I paid a lot more for that apartment.

washadjeffmad
0 replies
2d16h

Small landlords who didn't use RealPage didn't struggle with occupancy. Large ones "fired" renters and warehoused apartments, meeting debt obligations at occupancy rates even below 80%.

And most amenities are bullshit. They've taken ordinary, expected services and privatized them, externalizing the costs to residents for kickbacks, and made elective services like cable and internet mandatory through exclusive provider agreements to inflate revenue.

In aggregate, squeezing older properties subsidizes newer properties by equalizing returns. They're making just as much or more off of cheaper properties as newer "premium" ones.

kelnos
0 replies
3d

Because there's a shortage of units overall. All units get rented; the corporate landlords just make more profit, and a lot of people are priced out of the market, including many existing residents.

deepsun
5 replies
3d1h

If there's no profit to be made in building housing, why would anyone want to build housing?

To live in it.

from-nibly
3 replies
3d1h

You want to live in an apartment complex by yourself?

failuser
1 replies
3d

You’ll need a construction cooperative. IDK if those can compete with large construction companies due to the economy of scale. The construction cooperatives were a staple of late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, but were essentially outlawed later to make way for large construction business and mortgages-backed construction.

bluGill
0 replies
3d

I'm not against them, but they are not the right answer for everyone. They are great if you want to live in the same apartment for a few decades, but if you move they become tricky.

deepsun
0 replies
2d22h

It's called cooperative. If I'd like to live in apartment complex, I'd post an ad like "Buy an apartment in a future complex for a low price of X! Move in in only 2 years!". (Cost to build Y, number of apartments Z, X = Y/Z).

And it's not something new. When price is lower than market, people do buy it.

bluGill
0 replies
3d

What if I only want to live someplace for a couple years? Building a house that I want to live in for the next 40 years makes sense, but if you have no reason to think life will keep you in the one place for 40 years renting may be a better deal - let someone else take the risk of building a house and hoping someone comes to live in to.

bdcravens
5 replies
3d

Do you want to invest tens of millions of dollars into building an apartment with zero expectations of making a return?

No, but this doesn't change the fact that housing is a basic good like gasoline and insurance. Controls in those industries don't prevent companies from investing. Profit regulation doesn't mean no profit.

price controls on housing lead to few developers willing to build there

Because there are alternate places without those controls. If housing were treated like the essential good that it is, there wouldn't be any ROI havens, and developers would adapt (or die if they can't accept reducing the typical ROI, which averages around 15%)

rising demand which has not been satisfied by new housing construction

There's plenty of demand, just not for the houses that are being built. (That's not to say there aren't specific cities where there is no supply). Based on most affordability standards, many can't afford the typical rent or mortgage. If those prices can't come down, or income can't go up, then new types of much cheaper housing must be built.

Manuel_D
4 replies
3d

Gasoline isn't subject to price controls, though! They were in the past, and the results were disastrous. This is what price-controls on gasoline look like: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/-/media/images/essays/...

The way that the government influences gas prices is that they stockpile or release oil from the US strategic reserves. They don't regulate prices. They influence supply in order to influence prices. The analogy would be building public housing.

I'm not sure what you mean by treating housing like an "essential good". Most essential goods aren't subject to price controls. There aren't price controls on food, for example. Most countries that set price controls on food experience famines (or the price controls are widely ignored and the black market becomes the normal market).

bdcravens
3 replies
3d

You can be prosecuted for price gouging of essential goods.

Manuel_D
2 replies
3d

"price gouging" is not the same as price-fixing. Price gouging refers to raising prices in response to natural disasters: https://www.cato.org/blog/anti-price-gouging-laws-entrench-s...

Texas’s APGL kicks in when a disaster is declared by the governor or the country’s president. Under the law, merchants are not allowed to sell or lease fuel, food, medicine, lodging, building materials, construction tools, or other necessities at “exorbitant” or “excessive” prices, with those caught facing civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, rising to $250,000 if elderly consumers are affected.

There's very specific, and very short-term windows in which prices cannot be raise excessively. It's not even remotely comparable to price controls on rents.

orwin
1 replies
2d21h

It's called 'dynamic price control' and is present in most cities in my country. My landlord cannot rise the rent at weird levels, which is based on the selling cost of the unit. Basically if her unit appreciate 5% yoy, she won't be able to rise the rent higher than 5% yoy.

Manuel_D
0 replies
2d18h

So it's exactly the same thing as SF rent control, albeit with a higher allowable year-over-year increase. There's nothing "dynamic" about it, it's just textbook rent control.

dwallin
2 replies
3d

This is not a binary situation. There are plenty of reasonable approaches that help limit abusive landlord behavior without damaging the prospect of profitable real estate development.

Manuel_D
1 replies
3d

I wholeheartedly agree that landlords should not engage in abusive behavior: Landlords should not discriminate on the basis of protected class. They should keep units safe and up-to-code. They should not engage in deceptive practices like advertising one unit and selling a different one, or falsifying facts about the unit.

But where I'm not going to agree is the notion that setting rent above a certain threshold is "abusive landlord behavior". If a landlord is setting the rent too high, the consequence should be that the unit stays vacant. If someone is willing to pay that rent, then evidently the rent wasn't too high.

dwallin
0 replies
13h4m

Except that there are significant switching costs. A person moving has to pay moving costs, might have to replace furniture that doesn't work for the new place, can affect your children's schools etc. This means the value of a unit to someone living there can often be significantly higher than the market rate.

This can led to situations where the most profitable move for landlords is to take advantage of the discrepancy to regularly raise the rent for existing renters by more than the market, in attempt to maximize profit. Sure they might have to deal with the hassle of finding a new tenant every couple of years when someone gets priced out, but if it leads overall to slightly higher profits it's the winning capitalist move.

The rentiers are ostensibly following the law, but the overall cost to the population and quality of life loss to renters can be significantly outsized compared to a sliver of additional profit for the rentiers. This is a great example of externalized costs in a free market and exactly where government should generally be attempting sensible regulation.

BobbyJo
2 replies
3d1h

I agree with most of what you said, and do think supply is ultimately the fix, however, we also have to acknowledge the extreme inelasticity of demand for housing, and the massive shoe leather cost, both of which leave consumers at a massive disadvantage in price discovery.

Manuel_D
1 replies
3d1h

How are consumers at a disadvantage in price discovery? Hop on Zillow, craiglist, FB marketplace, etc. set your filters and sort by price.

BobbyJo
0 replies
2d22h

Price discovery as in the market converging on a price, not as in an individual seeing how much something would cost at present.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discovery

Since the good has very inelastic demand, suppliers have an easier time influencing the market. Small changes in supply should cause big changes in price, in both directions. However, prices go higher much faster during high demand than they go lower during low demand.

trilobyte
1 replies
2d23h

So you would be ok with contractors who are building the houses (often as subcontractors) coordinating their prices for the work to maximize the cost to the developer?

chgs
0 replies
2d20h

Sounds like a union

jmole
1 replies
3d1h

There is a lot more to San Francisco's housing crisis than price controls: lengthy permitting processes, environmental reviews, NIMBY community outreach, etc.

mistrial9
0 replies
3d1h

San Francisco has always been a crooked city.. fleecing newbies is sport.. they have jokes and murals and parties around it and always have.. in the American era.. source: personal testimony by someone born and raised there around 1900

biggoodwolf
1 replies
3d

Like Manhattan? They've built a lot, and it's getting cheaper every year

Manuel_D
0 replies
3d

Manhattan rents tanked during the pandemic, but rebounded pretty quickly after covid subsided. Supply and demand is such that prices may rise even if you build a lot of housing if there's even more people that want to live there. Big supply coupled with even bigger demand will still see prices rise.

washadjeffmad
0 replies
2d16h

You're missing that they didn't use this to build or expand housing, but to limit it. Just look at the occupancy rates.

They colluded with property management companies to capture 80% of existing multi-family dwellings and raised rents to inflate hard asset values of PE owned properties nationwide. Just because this is the closest that homeowners have had to a bailout in their lifetimes doesn't mean they didn't profit even more.

It was a scam.

skeeter2020
0 replies
2d23h

> leads to rising demand which has not been satisfied by new housing construction

we seem to accept this at face value, but there's lots of evidence that supply is not the only issue, or even the biggest. Example: in Toronto this year there's been over 220 large real estate projects go insolvent. There's clearly a limit on the demand side.

Alupis
8 replies
3d1h

The fact that providing people with housing is even seen as an "industry"

It is essential to living a decent life.

What troublesome phrasing. "Provide" implies people should get housing for free, and "decent" implies getting "decent" housing for free...

Well, so who is actually paying for it then? Magical handwavy "government" money? Everyone knows where government money comes from, right? Right?

Do we want more printed money and uncontrollable inflation? No? Oh so we should just steal this money from people who worked hard, because some others didn't?

It should not be a driver of lining the pockets of people who are already rich.

Ah yes, the ol' "rich people bad" whipping horse. Despite the tens of millions of jobs created by "rich people" and the millions and millions of people who live in actually decent housing in exchange for market rates.

The fact that some people actually truly believe "free government housing" is going to be "decent" is absolutely tragic. Yes, let's doom millions to the "projects" because it makes us feel better knowing those darn rich people aren't making money!

If anyone wants a porthole view into what government housing looks like - take a look at the plethora of stories and pictures from our military barracks, across all branches. Mold, bugs, broken appliances, holes in walls, locks that don't work... and nobody cares despite the very vocal, highly visible complaints. There's a reason our service men and women scramble to off-base housing the moment they are allowed.

switch007
7 replies
3d

I'll totally accept you're speaking just in the context of the USA but...

The fact that some people actually truly believe "free government housing" is going to be "decent" is absolutely tragic

Council houses are fairly highly regarded in the UK (i.e. the property, in terms of space, light, build quality. The estates/tenants, not so much...). They also have a track record of maintaining them far better than private/social landlords - I can personally attest to that.

It is the large homebuilder companies that build truly awful, "tragic" homes, cutting every single possible corner imaginable for an extra penny of profit.

Alupis
6 replies
3d

Wikipedia indicates most of these Council Homes were built in the early 1900's - and are not modern construction. An additional average of a around 100 homes total were built per year from the 40's through 1980. So these don't appear to be helping a significant portion of the population.

Wikipedia also indicates in the 1970's the UK government dramatically and suddenly cut back on funding for these homes (among other things), which led to some very poor living conditions.

Your quality of life being dependent on the whims of politicians and budgets outside-your-control seems awful...

switch007
5 replies
2d22h

I note you don't link to your sources. You need better sources and/or better research skills. 100 per year is way off. Have you confused 100 with 100,000? I think even that is low

Yes the Conservatives stopped building council homes, mostly through neoliberal ideology that the government shouldn't provide housing. The private market houses are far worse quality

chgs
4 replies
2d20h

The number of new council house starts dropped in the 70s, before thatcher.

The trend continued into the 80s but blaming thatcher and neoliberalism is simplistic at best.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

Table 2A, housing starts by FY.

1970 185k. 110k in 1978/79 before thatcher’s landslide. By 1980 (so before the 1980 housing act came in) down to 58k.

The starts are what’s important as those are the ones impacted by new legislation and policy.

switch007
3 replies
2d11h

From your source, this is the number dwellings "Completed - Local Authorities" from 1979 to 1997:

89,630 (1979)

88,540

68,330

40,080

39,170

37,580

30,410

25,380

21,820

21,450

19,350

17,870

11,230

5,700

3,360

2,880

3,440

1,740

1,550 (1997)

You're going to claim the Conservatives of that era didn't stop building council houses?

Compare with the 18 year period before Thatcher:

119,350 (1961)

132,070

126,240

156,830

167,300

179,170

202,860

190,670

182,380

179,280

157,380

122,360

104,570

124,140

152,470

153,750

145,070

113,660 (1978)

By 1980 (so before the 1980 housing act came in) down to 58k.

I don't recognise this 58k. What is the exact cell of that number?

chgs
2 replies
2d10h

Starts are important, not completions, when looking at policy impact. I added local authority and housing associations together as they are basically the same concept.

switch007
1 replies
2d8h

Oh you moved the goalposts. Got it.

Council houses and housing associations are completely different. Have you ever lived in either? I have

chgs
0 replies
2d6h

Fine, just have local authority numbers then which halved from 175k in the decade before thatcher was elected, let alone had any chance to implement policy.

She didn’t reverse the trend, but she didn’t start it.

legitster
7 replies
3d1h

Modern housing is a direct development of the industrial revolution. In that sense it is an industry.

You could provide housing like undeveloped nations do, where large families live in cramped hovels without electricity or running water.

In the sense that someone should want an apartment with 2 bathrooms, a fireplace, and a pool - it's easier to treat housing overall as a consumer good.

sangnoir
2 replies
3d1h

...vs "providing" housing like developed nations in cramped shelters, in cars and on the street? FYI: multigenerational households are a cultural artifact, not an economic one. As one might assume, hovels without water or electricity don't break the bank, they aren't "provided" by anyone either. Yours is a false dichotomy, and is easily disproved by examples in other developed countries where shelter is considered a right.

legitster
1 replies
3d

I grew up in tenements in Romania. So I can tell you from experience that building the bare minimum shelter for the most amount of people is possible (if less enticing than you may think). But the idea that they were anything other than "industrial" housing as OP states is ridiculous.

Regardless of who pays for it, housing modern peoples is an industry.

sangnoir
0 replies
2d23h

"Hovel" is the opposite of industrial housing, etymologically, and evokes the images of ad-hoc slums rather than soviet-style brutalist blocks. Industrial housing is a step up from what OP described (no running water or electricity).

I will also note that the currently in-vogue 5-over-1s lean heavily towards "Industrial housing". Funny how diffent economic systems both with a captive market converged towards no-frills housing.

Carrok
2 replies
3d1h

This is quite the straw man you've constructed.

You seem to be suggesting that either housing must be exploitatively expensive, or people must live in squalor.

legitster
1 replies
3d1h

You are strawmanning me. Nothing in my statement suggests that treating housing as a product means it has to be exploitatively expensive or given away for free. If anything, most industrial products are supposed to get cheaper over time.

kelnos
0 replies
3d

If anything, most industrial products are supposed to get cheaper over time.

And yet the cost of housing more or less always increases. Isn't that enough to suggest that there's something about this "industry" that doesn't quite make sense the way it's handled?

lawlessone
0 replies
3d

it's easier to treat housing overall as a consumer good.

But it doesn't function like that.

Building the house isn't even the part that is the problem. It's land/space and how some people maintain monopolies on those.

A free market might make the materials and construction of a house cheaper. It address that space is limited and that most expensive space is often where there are more jobs.

bequanna
2 replies
3d1h

Well, housing needs to mostly be handled by the private sector if we want high quality.

Government housing should absolutely exist, but only as a safety net as their management is incredibly inefficient.

Private housing isn’t the issue here: collusion is. Collusion should generally not be tolerated in a well regulated capitalist system.

mistrial9
1 replies
3d1h

there are massive and documented scandals at the US Federal level with the departments assigned to regulate and serve those markets (HUD etc).. an easy and relevant start is the Savings and Loan collapse of the 80s, directly on top of mortgage monies

bequanna
0 replies
2d23h

I don’t disagree but not sure what point you’re trying to make here.

Problems with regulation are the expected consequence of living in the real world and not a model. They should be fixed and we can do better.

I just don’t see how any of this leads us to more regulation. More government control means less efficiency and likely MORE corruption.

JackYoustra
1 replies
3d1h

I don't see why this is an important point: food is an industry and it's never been cheaper in human history than in developed capitalist countries with vibrant agribusiness.

RhodesianHunter
0 replies
3d

True but, look up the price fixing that's been going on in big AG via AgriStats. Similar story as OP.

diogocp
0 replies
3d

It being an industry is what allows people to live a decent life.

Just like farming being an industry allows you to sit at a desk all day instead of being out there foraging.

legitster
10 replies
3d1h

If this was a market for a less politically charged product than housing, would the quotes be as malicious? Like if this software was used to help people get the best price for their car or their stocks or collectibles?

alpha_squared
3 replies
3d1h

I'm not sure I understand what politics have to do with this. Housing is essential. It's "politically charged" because of the lack of affordability. Part of that is due to lack of building and now, evidently, part of that is due to price-fixing.

legitster
2 replies
3d1h

But as evidence of price fixing, people claiming to get sellers the best possible price isn't a smoking gun in any other market - essential or not.

kerkeslager
0 replies
3d

This isn't relevant. I'm don't want smoking guns, I want an economy where harming people isn't profitable.

If I invest in a stock and the stock goes down, nobody looks at my intentions and decides whether I should make money off it. It's my responsibility to understand what I'm investing in.

If I invest in harming consumers, nobody should look at my intentions and decide whether I should make money off it. It's my responsibility to understand what I'm investing in.

Even if RealPage didn't know what they were doing was harming renters, they should have known that. Knowing how your actions affect people is a prerequisite to running a business in any market, but especially in a market where people's basic needs are at stake.

everforward
0 replies
3d

Most markets have many people making that claim, though. Those people have to compete against each other. Their pricing is also optional, where RealPage was basically forcing landlords to use their prices.

RealPage’s big issue is market penetration, though. They control pricing for enough of the housing stock to artificially manipulate the cost of housing.

It’s one thing to promise to get clients a sale price on the far end of the bell curve. It’s another thing entirely to move the entire bell curve.

legitster
0 replies
2d23h

But again, these quotes aren't specific admissions of price collusion as they are just "getting the best price".

sophacles
0 replies
3d

Yes they would be, or at least should be taken that way. Capitalism is supposedly best for everyone because competition between suppliers of a good or service drives prices down allowing the most people to afford those goods or services. The jerk talking about "avoiding a race to the bottom" is really saying "lets circumvent market forces to screw people out of money since we're too incompetent to provide actual value in the face of competition".

lawlessone
0 replies
3d1h

Well yeah? for most people housing isn't abstract.

kerkeslager
0 replies
3d

If this was a market for a less politically charged product than housing, would the quotes be as malicious? Like if this software was used to help people get the best price for their car or their stocks or collectibles?

The answer to this question does not matter.

ahoy
0 replies
2d23h

I don't think Funko Pops and housing are comparable.

trilobyte
0 replies
2d23h

My concern with this is that it fundamentally undermines competition, which is a promise of the markets. Being more efficient means delivering products more cheaply than your competitors, which is good for the market. This sort of collusion completely undermines that and holds back innovation in the market.

How would real estate developers feel if construction companies / subcontractors had a similar product for pricing their labor? Or how would any company feel if employees worked together to set the price of their labor? That sounds kind of familiar, and doesn't sound like something most companies would be happy about.

legitster
28 replies
3d1h

I am a small-time landlord. There's no "marginal cost" to determine how much to charge for rent. The only thing I use to determine the price is the current market rate. And all I have to do is open up Zillow or Craigslist and do a search on similar properties with similar characteristics. It only takes ~5 minutes of research to get a competitive market rate.

While RealPage might command 80% of the market for this type of software, they only have 12,000 clients. There are over 5.2 million multi-family dwellings in the US. It's only a monopoly in that they offer a very niche product. So I doubt the implication the justice department is making here - that RealPage is having a significant impact on market price through widespread collusion.

Furthermore, housing is a market - nobody is "competing on merits". There's limited inventory, and it goes first-come, first-serve. Realpage advertising that it gets the best dollar for its clients isn't that much different than your Schwab account letting you know you shouldn't sell your MSFT share for $50. I suspect the DOJ may have trouble actually proving that landlords held to the price recommendations to their own detriment to keep them high.

While I appreciate the breaking up of a potential cartel here, and this is a software I would never use, I would hold my breath if I was expecting a sudden change in the rental market because of this. Inventory is still fundamentally limited, and unless the DOJ bans all market research, the going rate is still the going rate.

bbatsell
9 replies
3d1h

RealPage works by collating private competition data from all of their clients, running models to determine the highest possible vacancy rate for an area that will lead to the highest possible market rate, then telling their clients to set at that price and never offer discounts or reductions.

In a fair market, landlords with vacancies would want to fill them — they have tons of fixed costs and they can't leave money on the table like that. If you had trouble filling, you'd look at the market and adjust downwards, or offer better amenities, or do whatever you wanted to attract customers. The tension between demand and supply leads to market equilibrium.

RealPage tells its clients that if they all work together to set their prices higher than market equilibrium, hold out for far longer than they normally would want or what a free market would lead to, then the simple inelasticity of housing demand — everyone needs a home! — means that customers will eventually have to give in to the higher price in order to live their lives, and landlords will rake in the profits over time.

They use the data and actions of their clients working in concert in order to manipulate a fair market into a deeply unfair one which does not properly adjust to market forces.

legitster
6 replies
3d

Again, I have experience in this market so I have first hand experience.

I understand the cartel allegations here, but I think people are vastly underselling the competitive forces at play. If you are not filling your unit immediately, you are losing thousands of dollars a month.

Cartels break down because of the incentive to undercut (prisoner's dilemma). But in this case, it would be very, very profitable to undercut RealPage's prices and get your units filled before them. So their compliance and enforcement mechanisms of RealPage would have to be extremely robust to get corporations to willingly lose tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to collectively collude on prices.

bluGill
2 replies
2d23h

If you are not filling your unit immediately, you are losing thousands of dollars a month.

This is false. If you have 100 units with monthly rents at: 100x$900 = $90000, 90x$1000 = $90000. 85x$1100= $93500. Of course we have no idea how many people will decide to not rent from you at different rates, but it should be obvious that the numbers can work out to it being better to not rent a few units if the price goes higher by enough as a result.

You are correct that a cartel has incentive to defect, but is it enough? You are correct that this is prisoner's dilemma, but it is a multiple round game which has very different incentives from a single round. You are better off in a single round defecting, but you are better off in repeated rounds if everyone plays with the cartel and so they are not defecting. (or at least not too much)

pessimizer
0 replies
2d23h

85x$1100= $93500

And don't forget that you get to write off 15 empty units at the presumption of a $1100/mo rate. Or Airbnb them.

ericd
0 replies
2d23h

It’s enough if there’s enough inventory. The only reason it functions is because there’s not enough inventory in many of these markets.

redserk
0 replies
2d23h

How are the forces being undersold here? A large-scale property management company can drastically influence the market without needing to fully capture it or even hold a majority.

Let's say of a given market, 30% of all units are owned by a large-scale property management company using this software.

If the prices of the 30% of those properties was artificially kept high, it would push renters to look at the 70% of other landlords whose prices were kept low as a result of not using this software, causing a demand on that part of the market.

As demand rises in the 70% of open-market-priced apartments, I would expect these property owners to see that there's a bump in demand and would understandably see this as an opportunity to nudge prices up a bit.

If your property only received 10 potential tenant candidates a month a year ago, and you're now seeing 14-15, you might be leaving money on the table.

Removing the cartel claim for a moment:

Say I'm at a farmers market with 4 produce stands. If one stand hikes their prices 40% for whatever reason, presumably people would start to consider visiting the other 3 produce stands.

Why wouldn't the other stands consider raising their prices with the increased attention?

mjcl
0 replies
2d23h

I worked for a public REIT that started using YieldStar when I worked there. Once they changed to YieldStar, all pricing came out of YieldStar. Rental quotes for prospects were only generated from YieldStar. Any deviation from the YS price had to be approved by the regional VP and they were not common.

They did this because RP was able to demonstrate that accepting a bit more vacancy in the very near term meant higher rents (thus higher renewals) which more than paid for the additional vacancy.

alexpetralia
0 replies
2d22h

What about the counter incentive, that lowering rents lowers valuations, which affects creditworthiness and financing by lenders?

kelnos
1 replies
3d

running models to determine the highest possible vacancy rate for an area that will lead to the highest possible market rate

In my view, holding units vacant intentionally in order to increase profit should be illegal. Vacancy taxes don't go far enough; landlords who do this should be forced to sell any units they've decided to keep vacant, or see their properties seized.

Optimizing profit around providing people shelter (or avoiding doing so) is evil.

bluGill
0 replies
2d23h

That is very easy to cheat though. Two obvious ones: a different unit is held open every month; or these units are closed for remodeling. Until you get to long term 40% vacancy it is really hard to tell - and be careful not to kill rural small towns that no longer have demand and so apartments that will never be full anymore get torn down thus harming the few renters who remain (since it isn't worth replacing the building at current rents and many cannot afford the rent that a new apartment would need just to be worth building)

kerkeslager
5 replies
3d

While RealPage might command 80% of the market for this type of software, they only have 12,000 clients. There are over 5.2 million multi-family dwellings in the US. It's only a monopoly in that they offer a very niche product. So I doubt the implication the justice department is making here - that RealPage is having a significant impact on market price through widespread collusion.

Well, given your only justification for your doubt is that you compared clients to multifamily dwellings, I gotta say, your doubt is pretty not founded in reality.

Furthermore, housing is a market - nobody is "competing on merits".

Oof, bro.

"Competing on merits" is the entire justification for why free markets are important. If you're arguing that nobody is competing on merits, then that starts to sound like you're arguing that competition isn't working here.

Realpage advertising that it gets the best dollar for its clients isn't that much different than your Schwab account letting you know you shouldn't sell your MSFT share for $50.

The difference being that Schwab doesn't have the pull to price-fix MSFT. In cases where a single coordinates to control 80% of shares of a stock and then price-fix it, that is, in fact, illegal.

While I appreciate the breaking up of a potential cartel here, and this is a software I would never use, I would hold my breath if I was expecting a sudden change in the rental market because of this. Inventory is still fundamentally limited, and unless the DOJ bans all market research, the going rate is still the going rate.

I agree with you that housing prices are not likely to drastically change as a result of this, but my reason is that this isn't the only price-fixing mechanism in place.

legitster
4 replies
3d

Competition clearly isn't working for housing. Because it's not a competitive market. I am just skeptical to the extent it is due to pricing cartels.

bluGill
3 replies
2d23h

It is a competitive market. However supply is often supply constrained (both by bad zoning and that some places are just better than others). The cartels only work because supply is constrained enough that they have power, if supply was less constrained the cartel could not raise prices as much (when supply is constrained you need less members in the first place).

I support looser zoning rules as reducing supply constraints is the only long term way out of high rents. However some places are better than others and there is a limit to how much looser zoning can reduce prices. (I wouldn't live in a tiny mud hut even if it was cheap and legal)

gen220
2 replies
2d20h

If we loosen zoning, and a half-dozen skyrises go up that are owned by a ~cartel~ group of friendly property developers, with X% of housing required to go to low-to-middle income households with a govt-required vacancy rate on that segment, do you think that would make rental prices go down?

Because we've run this experiment in Downtown Brooklyn for the last ten years, and rent has only gone very significantly up.

I think, at some point, you have to begin asking questions of the concept of nonresident landlordism and privately-owned massively-multifamily housing, rather than zoning, when changes to zoning don't actually make a difference to residents.

bluGill
1 replies
2d15h

A half dozen isn't much. The real question is how would it be different. I contend it would have been worse but we cannot know.

gen220
0 replies
2d5h

I guess it was closer to a dozen if you add up all the smaller ones. City tower, the Death Star looking one, the Alexa looking one, the 3 or 4 medium sized ones on Gold St, the Brooklyner, the 5 or 6 medium sized ones on Hoyt, the One with the Apple Store, the three or four around Barclays Center.

We’re talking about residential space for 10s of thousands of people that completely changed the vibe of the neighborhood for better and worse.

You don’t need the counter factual to look at the prices they’re leasing for. Or to understand that the wealthy folk in these buildings look down at the cutesy brownstones and think to themselves “oh it’d be nice to live in one of those next!”. To realize that the influx of monied people and the accompanying influx of goods and services to pander to them induces top-end demand for the neighborhood and inflates rent.

The kind of high-density housing we build in this country does not deflate housing prices.

To clarify, it might be different if the neighborhoods surrounding this area were not majority owned by nonresident landlords, often the children of the original purchasers.

Increased supply solves pricing when you have a competitive and free market, but the point people in this thread are trying to make is that housing (especially in urban areas) is not at all a free and competitive market. Landlords can afford to let an apartment lay fallow. However, people not only need places to live, but they believe that they can’t afford (socially, career-wise, whatever) to leave a set of zip codes. It leads to rent being a one-way ratchet that dramatically outpaces wage growth and inflation.

Sohcahtoa82
5 replies
3d1h

While RealPage might command 80% of the market for this type of software, they only have 12,000 clients. There are over 5.2 million multi-family dwellings in the US.

That reveals a startling statistic that 80% of the market is controlled by only 12,000 users. That's 433 units per user on average.

legitster
3 replies
3d1h

I think the better implication is that the vast majority of apartment owners don't bother paying for pricing software.

It's worth pointing out that third-party tools like 6Sense assess RealPage's customer base as much, much lower (around 6000 paying customers).

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
2 replies
3d1h

I think the better implication is that the vast majority of apartment owners don't bother paying for pricing software.

I don't think there's anything so far to indicate this or that; there's still a reasonable possibility that 80% of the market is controlled by large property management businesses.

legitster
1 replies
3d

This is easy to look up. There are approx 300,000 property managers in the US.

Assuming RealPage isn't lying about their number of active customers, they would only account for 16% of the industry. Obviously the numbers could be skewed wildly but it's still far from a monopoly.

everforward
0 replies
3d

The allegation would be that they have a monopoly over rental pricing, in which case the relevant metric is the percentage of rental pricing they control, not what percentage of landlords use RealPage.

If Kroger, Walmart, and Safeway decided to collude, they’re probably less than a percent of grocery store brands. They are like 95% of the grocery supply, though.

bena
0 replies
3d

There's two major companies in the area that rent out apartments.

I rented from one a few years back. In my unit, there were 12 apartments (I think). IIRC, four per floor, with three floors. I believe there were 8 to 12 units surrounding a common area in our "block". Then this "block" was a part of a larger group of complexes and in the area, they had five or six of these groups.

That's around 50 - 100 units.

They also had other locations. They probably manage at least 1000 units.

The other company manages fewer, but not by much.

If RealPage gets both of them, they've effectively set the prices for all apartments in the area.

seydor
2 replies
3d

they only have 12,000 clients

When you perform said Zillow or Craigslist search, do you settle for the higher end of the range of prices or the low end? Realpage only needs to manipulate a relatively small number of listings to have a huge impact in all rent prices.

legitster
1 replies
3d

The lower end! I usually undercut the market rate by ~$50.

My house rents for $2400 a month. If I leave it on the market for just a month I would lose more money than I would gain in 2 years at a higher rent! So the incentive is to get it rented out as quickly as possible and get it booked before the other guy.

So my incentive is to be just a bit lower than the other guy so mine goes first.

I will not deny that the market rate for housing is absurdly high, but it is still a market and incentives still matter.

bluGill
0 replies
2d23h

That is because you only have one or a few units. When you have many units the numbers work out very different for empty units in exchange for higher rent.

matwood
0 replies
3d1h

I generally agree with your assessment. As someone mentioned above though, I think the emails where RealPage is telling landlords not to lower prices are much more damning. It puts RP as the locus of collusion.

kelnos
0 replies
3d

While RealPage might command 80% of the market for this type of software, they only have 12,000 clients. There are over 5.2 million multi-family dwellings in the US.

Those statistics don't tell us enough to see if this is a problem, though. In the extreme case (obviously this is not true), everyone uses pricing software, so RealPage's 80% is 80% of all dwellings, and those 12,000 clients own 4.2M multi-family dwellings.

Also what matters is number of units, not number of multi-family dwellings. Owning a duplex does not give you the same clout over local rentals as, say, owning the only large (at say, 500 units) apartment complex does.

oconnore
20 replies
3h19m

I am excited and optimistic that we appear to be applying economic principles to housing! Now that we're getting rid of centralized price controls / collusion, next can we do supply/demand?

rcpt
3 replies
2h58m

You do that by building enough houses to make housing unattractive to investment firms

bunderbunder
2 replies
2h46m

Alternatively, we adjust the tax code to reflect the instinct that people should deserve to keep a larger percentage of money when they actually worked to earn it, and that income that's essentially free to people who already have lots of money should maybe be taxed at a higher rate.

I realize this is a spicy take, but we've really got to get away from this thing where we advantage passive income for wealthy landowners. It didn't work out well for society in enlightenment-era France, it didn't work out well in Victorian England, it didn't work out well in Tsarist Russia, and I'm not convinced that removing birthright qualifications and primogeniture makes all that much more equitable in the modern USA than it did in any of those periods that we tend to look back on as being indefensibly elitist.

duped
1 replies
33m

To be fair, the income isn't "free" and the margins are basically zero for small-time property owners on the rent itself. The bulk of the income comes from appreciation in value of the real estate, and when you sell you owe capital gains taxes (which are exempt on sales of a primary residence). And in most places the property taxes are higher, for my home it's about 15% higher.

I only know this because I have been preparing to rent my primary residence to see if it's more economical to sell today or hold and sell later, while renting. The answer is the latter, but in terms of real cash I will be in the red for about 2 years until the (very small) difference in mortage + insurance + taxes + upkeep and the rent will be profitable. And even then, it's maybe $150/month.

All told it's a slightly better investment than S&P 500 index funds, but resistant to downturns. But it's not a real source of passive income, you don't get your cash out for years.

bunderbunder
0 replies
6m

It sounds like you're looking at it from the perspective of someone who's wealthy enough to take on a few rental properties of their own. The economics start looking rather different from the perspective of a real estate speculation hedge fund. The same forces that make it such easy money for them are also the ones that make it not such easy money for you. When they drive up prices it curtails any more liquid form of asset growth you might have by pulling all the money over to the on-paper value of the property. That's fine for them because real estate is still pretty darn liquid from the perspective of hedge funds and REITs. But it's not very liquid at all from the perspective of a small-time landlord who needs to actually look their tenant in the eye and tell them they're facing eviction because the owner of their home needs to free up some spending money.

tantalor
0 replies
3h4m

You can't just ban them. Where there is profit to be made, they will find a way around any regulation.

You have to change the structure of the market so they no longer see these investments as profitable.

One way local areas do this is by "homestead tax exemption" which reduces property taxes if you live in your own home, but this is binary and punishes small landlords equally as big ones.

candiddevmike
0 replies
3h7m

Would be interesting to see what would happen if renters had the option to buy the underlying property/unit somehow after being a tenant for a certain time.

The goal should be ownership for folks who want it, not a nation of renters.

Analemma_
0 replies
2h58m

These PE firms specifically say in their SEC filings that the most credible threat to their business model is municipalities removing restrictive zoning regulation and allowing the natural rate of market-rate housing to be built (0, 1). You can foil their schemes and bankrupt them by electing officials who are pro-development.

[0]: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001687229/a154763..., "“We operate in markets with strong demand drivers, high barriers to entry, and high rent growth potential, primarily in the Western United States, Florida, and the Southeast United States.”

[1]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1562401/000119312513..., "The continuing development of apartment buildings and condominium units in many of our target markets increases the supply of housing and exacerbates competition for tenants."

__loam
6 replies
2h26m

We should build large numbers of commie blocks until PE firms regret buying residential properties.

mullingitover
4 replies
2h5m

Better yet, we can just copy Singapore or Vienna's public housing systems and actually have desirable public housing.

Arguably, the reason we don't already have this is because a large contingent of the voting public has been conditioned to believe that if the government does something well, it's communism, so the government should do anything well.

pc86
2 replies
1h59m

It's less a belief that the government shouldn't do anything well, and more a belief that it can't.

pchristensen
0 replies
57m

There are plenty of motivated actors that are terrified that the government will do a good job, and so they work to sabotage it so it won't be effective competition.

mullingitover
0 replies
1h36m

Right, and I'd argue that the belief that it can't do things well frequently comes from the government being deliberately handicapped by those who believe it should't do things well. For example crippling (or outright trying to destroy) the US Postal Service out of the belief (or vested interest) that private delivery companies shouldn't have to compete against a publicly subsidized service.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
8m

We don’t have it because we aren’t a city state. In Singapore, you have a few choices, but they are all in Singapore. If the public housing system came to the USA without any local residency requirements, everyone would want to live in a few hot cities and the system would just fall apart. Not only that, once residency restrictions are in place, people will be stuck in places due to their public housing, they won’t be able to just move to Seattle for better job opportunities.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
10m

Commie blocks don’t work, just ask China who has an even more messed up property market than we do.

SoftTalker
3 replies
3h0m

I live in a town where all the officials express politically popular laments about the affordability of housing, but every time a developer wants to build apartments or tear down some old run-down post-war cookie-cutter houses for modern duplexs or tri-levels these same officials run them through a gauntlet of demands and then often as not end up denying the permits.

They say they want dense, walkable, core neighborhoods but when people actually try to build denser housing it's like pulling teeth.

There actually is some building happening but the demand is so far ahead of the supply that it's not nearly enough.

bilbo0s
1 replies
2h40m

That's not most municipalities though.

There are a lot of places, particularly the high demand places, where the cost of acquiring the houses in the first place is the hang up. Everyone is certain they can get half a mil minimum. That drives costs considerably when you need 1/2 a block, or a full block for high density development. It's not easy. You could even have to end up giving the current land owners some preferential share of the finished development. Which, of course, means there's less profit for other potential partners at the end.

People ask, why are apartments so expensive? In high demand areas, that's a big part of the reason. Land acquisition costs were so high that it precludes building anything that can offer that <USD3000 a month price tag. (And to be honest, that's not even all that affordable really. But it illustrates how the numbers on a lot of these new developments work out.)

Usually the municipality or the state has to step in with some kind of break in order to make the numbers work out. And that's when we get to the step you're talking about where the state or the municipality demands this or that or the other. But the politicians have to demand something for the break, or it's seen as just having handed over taxpayer money to their buddies in construction. ie - corruption.

So from beginning to end, it's a tough problem.

EDIT:

It seems before I even finished typing my message, sibling messages appeared illustrating the point I was making in the last paragraph. There is no way in today's environment of completely broken down professionalism and trust, that a politician can give a concession without getting something for his/her community that s/he can use as justification for the concession. Otherwise, people, rightly or wrongly, just see it as handing free money to a politician's friends.

no_wizard
0 replies
5m

Land value tax would fix this in a hurry. Land owners would be incentivized to sell or make more productive use of their land, which adds enough positive pressure for them to go to market and make a deal. The biggest flaw in US housing is the ability to hold out at effectively no cost even as land value skyrockets. The taxation does not keep pace with the actual value. This allows stubborn sellers who want above market sales to hold out, potentially for years, until someone buys at an inflated price, with no real downside.

Combine with upzoning and it would really stimulate the housing market in short order without subsidy.

aidenn0
0 replies
2h9m

It's death by a thousand cuts. If it takes an architect working 10+ hours a week for 2-3 years get permits, that sets a fairly high floor on the cost for new development.

chongli
0 replies
2h34m

Yes, one way we could fix supply/demand is by scaling up the density of detached and semi-detached neighbourhoods. This means mandating narrow one-way streets (6m wide) and banning wide two-way streets (15m wide), forcing smaller front yards (reducing setback distances), eliminating garages and driveways in favour of street parking, allowing narrower properties and smaller homes overall. Furthermore, we should be allowing mixed use zoning so that small shops, restaurants, cafes, and bars can serve these neighbourhoods and promote a walkable lifestyle.

These neighbourhoods can be served by light rail / street cars allowing more distant travel via rapid public transit, further reducing the need for cars. Look at a lot of the older neighbourhoods in big cities such as Riverdale in Toronto [1] to see what streetcar suburbs look like.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

bearjaws
20 replies
3d2h

I am very curious how this will play out.

On one hand, I have seen it first hand here in Orlando that EVERY apartment complex uses the same software, all of them. At the same time, rent has gone up 300% in 10 years, or around 10% per year.

FTA it states that it was the fact that they all shared all their pricing and inventory data with RealPage, which then determined the price using algorithms and therefore rental properties weren't competing against one another. When to me, there are simply no spare apartments, I've seen some complexes down to 1-2 units by the end of July.

Lots of systems using competitors data and algorithms to price items, so was it simply the fact that too many people used RealPage, what if nearby properties didn't use RealPage and the rents went up anyway?

I am not sure if this is price fixing, I don't know any landlords that use it, every home I've rented was with someone who owned 1-2 extra properties and just used Zillow or Craigslist.

That being said, I price my rental properties against what similar square footage gets at nearby apartments... Sooo if they are going up my rent is going up as well, and I bet most landlords do this.

So we've ended up accidentally price fixing the market I guess? I think it really depends on the internal communication and what they sold to landlords.

Manuel_D
6 replies
3d1h

Lots of people want to blame rising prices on price fixing, when there really is growing demand without commensurate increases of supply. They want a silver bullet to bring down prices, without tackling the underlying problems.

That being said, I price my rental properties against what similar square footage gets at nearby apartments... Sooo if they are going up my rent is going up as well, and I bet most landlords do this.

This is essentially what RealPage does. It just automates calculating "what similar square footage gets at nearby apartments". It probably does other stuff like puts a premium on corner units or those with south facing windows.

bick_nyers
2 replies
3d1h

I agree that the underlying issue is a lack of supply. However, if a landlord is commanding a 30% profit margin on a non-luxury apartment then I think they are contributing to the problem (to be clear, I'm not insinuating anyone in this thread is doing this). I think the only objective way to tell if it's priced too high is by the profit margin, but of course even that can be inflated if e.g. a developer took a huge margin on it before selling it to a new owner.

As to what an "ethical and not terrible for society" profit margin would be is above my pay grade, but I would estimate 15%. It also probably depends on how easily you can make money on the stock market as well.

matwood
0 replies
3d

You know what gets developers excited about building? Someone getting consistent 30% profit margins.

Now, government just has to get out of the way and let housing be built.

HDThoreaun
0 replies
2d20h

Business arent charities. Almost every one is trying to maximize profits.

biggoodwolf
1 replies
3d

No, many of these building are way under 80% utilization.

Sohcahtoa82
0 replies
3d1h

Lots of people want to blame rising prices on price fixing, when there really is growing demand without commensurate increases of supply. They want a silver bullet to bring down prices, without tackling the underlying problems.

Yup. The underlying problem is a single word: supply.

Build more supply, the prices come down. But of course, developers know that. They don't want the prices to come down, so they don't build supply.

bick_nyers
5 replies
3d1h

Housing is pretty inelastic. I think people are just willing to suffer financially to avoid the fate of homelessness. Just because there aren't vacancies anywhere doesn't mean that the price is fully justified, because housing will take priority over groceries for a lot of people.

RhodesianHunter
3 replies
3d

Housing supply is inelastic due to the time it takes to permit and built.

Housing demand is more elastic than you suspect. People have income on a curve, and at a certain point of price/quality will move further out and commute or move to a lower cost of living city entirely.

WarOnPrivacy
1 replies
3d

People have income on a curve, and at a certain point of price/quality will move further out and commute or move to a lower cost of living city entirely.

This doesn't describe the major renter class who has few workable options to choose from. They take whatever they can get.

Once they manage a place to live, they're likely trapped there because they don't have a wad of cash on hand (required to move).

That's average renter difficulty. It can get far worse.

In 2021, the few rentals available here got 400 applications/day. We beat out 50 applicants for one that was advertised for 2 hours (offered 6mos up front).

We beat long odds and barely avoided homelessness (even tho we had good employment history + money in the bank).

Many, many others were less lucky. Every rent-by-the-week hotel filled up, typically with people exhausting their savings.

bluGill
0 replies
3d

People also start to take on roommates or become roommates. People in general want a place of their own. However as rent goes up they will start to be willing to rent the upper bunk in a bedroom, and people who do have a place to live start to become willing to rent out part of their bedroom just to afford the rent. For most this is the last option they will take (homeless might be better if they can find a place to sleep the night outside)

gen220
0 replies
2d20h

Meanwhile, I know many people in NYC who spend ~60% of their post-tax income on rented housing.

Nobody is happy about it or thinks it's a good idea, but living further out is not perceived as a legitimate option because of the fear of being severed either socially or career-wise.

Whether that's a rational fear or not, it's a reality that allows housing prices to outpace wage gains every year. As somebody who used to think housing demand is fairly elastic: housing demand is much less elastic than you'd suspect.

legitster
0 replies
2d23h

Housing can be very elastic. Humans can be very adaptive to compromises in living space requirements to fulfill the basic needs.

Part of the problem is that the lower end of potential inventory (pod apartments/SRO/etc) are essentially illegal in this country. So the barriers to entry make it seem much more inelastic.

tootie
2 replies
3d1h

Yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong with algorithmic pricing. Issues would start to occur if the pricing was actively manipulated and RealPage was used by so many landlords in some geographic areas that competition broke down. That may be hard to prove.

skipkey
0 replies
3d1h

So I worked for RealPage for a few years in the late 90s and again in the mid 2000s, and at the time they didn’t hold a majority of the market. But it would not surprise me now if they held a majority of the market in large complexes today. At the time they were growing mostly by acquisition of competitors.

ejstronge
0 replies
3d1h

A relevant excerpt from the complaint:

RealPage-defined submarkets identified in Appendix A are relevant markets in which the agreements between RealPage and AIRM and YieldStar users to align pricing has harmed, or is likely to harm, competition and thus renters. In each of these markets, the penetration rate for at least (i) AIRM and YieldStar, or (ii) AIRM, YieldStar, and OneSite ranges from at or around 29% to more than 60%.10
weknowbetter
0 replies
3d1h

I mean what can you do? The market is forcing you to raise rent. Your hands are tied.

pfisherman
0 replies
2d23h

What you are doing is just good business. You are not implicitly or explicitly colluding with other property owners to set you prices. You are simply doing market research based on publicly available data and making an independent decision.

Contrast this with a cartel that includes a significant number of landlords in your city (i.e. way more than just a couple of your buddies) that (1) shares non public info such as current occupancy rates, current lease terms and durations, etc., (2) sets prices as a bloc, and (3) enforces compliance on pricing targets.

It’s qualitatively different from how you described your situation.

cjbgkagh
0 replies
3d1h

I think the major difference is price is set at the margin, so only the marginal renter has to use the software in order to move the market. Since rental owners, like wealth, exist on a power law curve large numbers of properties are owned by very few people. I.e. it is possible for both the average landlord to not be using the software but the average property is owned by a landlord who is.

The other thing is that normally there is an advantage to breaking the collusion which is what generally prevents them. AFAIK the software is capable of punishing people who break from the suggested price so this pushes the cost of maintaining the collusion onto the participants who have to put up with vacancies for longer than they would otherwise.

So in my view you can have an implicit collusion, or a collusion in effect even without an explicit collusion and with most of the participants not participating in it.

I also think this is one of the most important points of contention of our time. Our ponzi economy requires extracting monopolistic rents which is absolutely crushing the middle class and younger people. When I last visited SF downtown was a ghost town with many of the businesses that survived Covid being driven out by high rents - it appears that rental collusion has already been more damaging than a global pandemic.

akira2501
0 replies
3d

I've seen some complexes down to 1-2 units by the end of July.

And you're sure the building is actually occupied and the units haven't been strategically taken off the market?

I am not sure if this is price fixing,

It is on RealPage's part. It's their stated _intention_. Whether cases should open against landlords who used it, I agree, I'm not sure, but it _is_ clear that RealPage broke the law here.

I think it really depends on the internal communication and what they sold to landlords.

The real question is "does realpage charge landlords for it's service?"

jasode
17 replies
3d1h

>Armed with competing landlords’ data, RealPage also encourages loyalty to the algorithm’s recommendations through, among other measures, “auto accept” functionality and pricing advisors who monitor landlords’ compliance.

I think the "private prices" + "autoaccept" + "compliance" is the key misbehavior that gets RealPage into legal trouble.

If competitors want to converge on prices in a legal manner, they have to do out in the open via "price signaling" via public posting of prices. That's how it's legally possible for competitors in other industries to do it:

- gas stations looking at each others signs of prices and quickly adjusting to match;

- e-auctions like Ebay/Reverb showing a seller what the previous range of sold prices were;

- Kelly "Blue Book" showing current used car market prices

- Zillow publicly showing rental rates, etc.

Neither the platform nor the sellers in those examples get in trouble for "price fixing".

In contrast, the privately shared pricing with compliance monitoring by the platform is too coordinated to avoid legal scrutiny.

bogwog
7 replies
2d23h

I think you're over analyzing and confusing things. Price fixing is when competitors work together to raise prices above what they would normally be in a competitive market.

Using your gas station example, a gas station isn't going to look at a competitor selling gas at $4.15 and decide to raise their price to $4.45. They would lower their price to match the competition, otherwise they'd lose sales and make less money. Price fixing would be if both gas stations decided to raise their price to $4.45 at the same time so that customers don't have a choice.

andrew_eu
4 replies
2d23h

The analogy also works in the opposite direction. If a gas station is selling at $4.10 a gallon and another down the street is selling at $4.15, the first gas station could happily up their price to $4.14. 1% more revenue and they're still the cheapest on the block.

dwaltrip
2 replies
2d22h

And if there is a third also selling at $4.10? Unless they privately coordinate and collude, its hard for this to work for artificial price increases.

coding123
1 replies
2d11h

I think one thing that's weird to me is that Shell and Exxon or 76 or whatever all somehow got their gas to be somewhere in the same ballpark. You'd expect to see that some gas companies can't get their shit together and can't figure out how to extract, purify, and distribute gas at anything less than $500 per gallon. Now, naturally you'd expect those companies to just go out of business. And you'd also expect to see at least one that figures out how to do all of that for $1 per gallon. Yet, here they all are, selling it around the same price. It's too strange in my opinion. There is collusion happening in many markets. I suspect they are all producing it for way less which is why one of them doesn't suddenly go out of business, but the fact that they're not selling it so low that the competitors simply go out of business - again a collusion signal.

oooyay
0 replies
2d23h

Competitive markets keep things within a tolerance, imo. If the average is $4.10 then you can expect the price to vary up and down by some amount depending on location and other things provided.

What RealPage does is distinct because it assures prices are always above and by orders of magnitude what they should be. It also achieves that through private communication which I think is generally accepted as a problem.

jasode
1 replies
2d23h

>, a gas station isn't going to look at a competitor selling gas at $4.15 and decide to raise their price to $4.45. They would lower their price to match the competition, otherwise they'd lose sales and make less money.

But the airlines are also doing the opposite of your scenario: they also raise prices instead of lower them via legal "price signaling" via publicized fares[1] in the global reservations system.

Competitors can converge on a higher price instead of a lower price. It's not just one direction. They just need to do it via public price signaling to stay out of legal trouble.

In 2022, Apple Music raised their subscription from $9.99 to $10.99. Spotify then followed them and also raised their price to $10.99. By 2023, they both converged on $10.99. I think right now in 2024, Spotify is $1 higher at $11.99. Nobody should be surprised if Apple Music also raises its to $11.99.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=It+is+now+common+for+an+airl....

bogwog
0 replies
2d21h

Competitors can converge on a higher price instead of a lower price. It's not just one direction. They just need to do it via public price signaling to stay out of legal trouble.

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that companies are colluding, but not really because the prices are public? Most prices are public, just walk into any supermarket or open Amazon.com and you'll see public prices. If a company bases their price on a competitor's price, that's not collusion, that's just a pricing strategy. If a company is able to price a product above their competitors and still succeed (e.g. by investing more in marketing), that's legal too.

In 2022, Apple Music raised their subscription from $9.99 to $10.99. Spotify then followed them and also raised their price to $10.99. By 2023, they both converged on $10.99. I think right now in 2024, Spotify is $1 higher at $11.99. Nobody should be surprised if Apple Music also raises its to $11.99.

Streaming is not an example of a healthy market IMO. I don't know the economics of it all, but I know all the streaming services need to pay the same record labels. Whatever is going on there, it's weird that they all cost the same. I currently pay $10.99/month for Tidal, which is the same exact price as most other services. I wouldn't be surprised if there was collusion going on there, maybe even something like RealPage behind the scenes. There's also the factor of Apple and Google's monopolies over apps, and I wonder if undercutting Apple/Youtube is bad for business.

But the airlines are also doing the opposite of your scenario: they also raise prices instead of lower them via legal "price signaling" via publicized fares[1] in the global reservations system.

The link you posted seems to be a google search page? Not sure what you meant by that.

kpw94
6 replies
3d1h

Many listings for apartments are on on-site.com (which is "a RealPage company") and are publicly available...

So it could be argued it's not

"private prices" + "autoaccept" + "compliance"

But rather

"public prices" + "autoaccept" + "compliance"

Still problematic behavior (and probably add "private knowledge of inventory forecast" on top of that), but I'd argue price signaling of the available inventory isn't the main issue.

jasode
3 replies
3d

>So it could be argued it's not "private prices"

I added "private prices" as one of the factors because the official DOJ wording in the complaint mentions "nonpublic/confidential/sensitive" prices in 3 different places:

The complaint alleges that RealPage contracts with competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage nonpublic, competitively sensitive information about their apartment rental rates

“We allege that RealPage’s pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents.

Landlords agree to share their competitively sensitive data with RealPage in return for pricing recommendations and decisions that are the result of combining and analyzing competitors’ sensitive data. *
everforward
2 replies
3d

I don’t think they’re talking about the price they’re renting the apartment for; I can’t imagine that number is secret in any meaningful sense of the word. Who rents an apartment without knowing the price?

I think they’re talking about more sensitive internal numbers. What are the costs and margins on the unit? How quickly are units moving at a certain price? What’s the turnover at particular prices?

I think the core mechanics bear some similarities to insider trading, with a third party “washing” the non-public information.

stackskipton
0 replies
3d

Another big one is when do the leases end for inventory control. RealPage is why Apartment dwellers report getting options to renew at cheapest price for odd number of months like 17. Realpage is trying to prevent a bunch of leases ending and flooding the market.

kpw94
0 replies
2d21h

I think they’re talking about more sensitive internal numbers. What are the costs and margins on the unit? How quickly are units moving at a certain price? What’s the turnover at particular prices?

Yeah that's my understanding of it too "competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage nonpublic, competitively sensitive information about their apartment rental rates and other lease terms".

I.e. realPage has an oracle view of all the lease ending times etc, so it knows for instance, this next July there's going to be very few availability, so boost all the rents by X%

I guess there's a "private price" if the apartment complex share what, after all negotiations, the renter ended up signing for. It can be more than what was on the public website, if they ended up signing for a shorter lease, or less if the apartment ended up needing to throw in "first month free" etc.

There's also private price of lease renewals done before the unit is put for rent on the website.

hnburnsy
0 replies
2d19h

are publicly available

The list price is different than the final accepted monthly rate\term for the renter. Realpage is getting the actual rental information.

In addition, the occupancy of the building is also not public data.

bluGill
0 replies
3d

There is more than just pricing at question here. If you go to your typical local gas station with a 5000 gallon tank and fill up the station will raise their prices above the other stations in the area because they will only have a small amount of gas in their tanks and so they want everyone to go elsewhere until the next delivery fills the tanks up again. (depending on when you fill up the station may not even have 5000 gallons in their tanks.) How much tank is left at any station is NOT public information shared with other stations in the area.

RealPage though has information on how many apartments are empty and uses that in algorithms even though it isn't public information.

tmoertel
0 replies
3d

The classic way that businesses openly coordinate their pricing is via price matching. Businesses advertise their preferred prices but also promise that they'll match lower prices from competitors. Competitors see these advertisements and set their own prices to approximately match.

The FTC does not consider this type of open signaling to be price fixing:

Q: Our company monitors competitors' ads, and we sometimes offer to match special discounts or sales incentives for consumers. Is this a problem?

A: No. Matching competitors' pricing may be good business, and occurs often in highly competitive markets. Each company is free to set its own prices, and it may charge the same price as its competitors as long as the decision was not based on any agreement or coordination with a competitor.

Source: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

legitster
0 replies
3d1h

The Blue Book is a great example because the number is so often discarded in almost all sales.

Another example would be stock trading apps, especially ones that give you forecasts and estimates as to when to buy and sell.

currymj
17 replies
3d2h

Algorithmic pricing that learns to tacitly collude is a hot area of study in computer science and economics. For example, if you train simple online learning algorithms to adjust prices, sometimes they can learn to keep prices high or to take turns winning customers, rather than just competing. People have found some empirical evidence of this on platforms like Amazon where a lot of small sellers use pricing bots.

However, it seems this is a more of a hybrid situation. A big part of the complaint is just all these incriminating emails and documents where RealPage appears to be coaching landlords to avoid lowering rents or giving concessions, independent of the software.

At the same time, there was an algorithmic component, which the customers appreciated: “I always liked this product because your algorithm uses proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and term. That’s classic price fixing...”

legitster
11 replies
3d1h

This gets into prisoner's dilemma though. If everyone but me is using the price fixing app, I have a strong incentive to undercut them, even by just a few dollars. So without a cartel-like enforcement mechanism, there is no reason it wouldn't just fall apart naturally in the long run.

In the complaint there was a mention of "compliance" which could get into that piece though.

everforward
4 replies
3d

I think you’re presuming elastic supply, where you can make up the lost profit from undercutting by selling more units.

Real estate supply isn’t very elastic, and demand already outpaces supply. Your units will likely get rented, as long as you aren’t in the top 0.1% of prices.

Therefore your incentive is to maximize profit per unit since you can’t move more units. Your incentive is to also join in on price fixing, because it’s the only way to make more money.

Supply outpacing demand would cause this to dissolve, as landlords actually have to compete for tenants and the highest priced landlords have empty apartments.

bluGill
3 replies
3d

For the landlord units is elastic. If you have many units you can always not rent out a few, in fact you should always have a few units that you are remodeling and thus cannot rent out.

In general as a large landlord should have around 10% of units not rented, if you have more than that rented you should raise your rates until people go elsewhere thus bringing you down to 10%, while if you have less than 10% lower your rates until people start renting from you. Different landlords have different numbers, but 10% is a good starting place. 100 units at $900/month = 90,000, 90 units at $1000/month = $90,000, but you have a few units free in case someone desperate is willing to pay $1100/month (and of course you can remodel one of those empty units thus making it more desirable)

mjcl
0 replies
2d23h

Just a note on vacancy targets, I worked for a MF REIT (~33k units) and pre-YieldStar their average target occupancy was around 97% for properties. After YieldStar was implemented the average dropped to more like 95%. As far as I'm aware, the other large managers also targeted the mid-to-high 90s.

everforward
0 replies
2d23h

Supply was probably a poor term because it’s overloaded; I probably should have said stock. They cannot easily scale their stock of housing, so they can’t make up for lower profit with volume the way a grocery store or something might.

diebeforei485
0 replies
2d23h

90% is actually quite healthy. If all housing was always full, there is no slack in the system. We should always have some overcapacity in the housing market, just like we do for hospital beds, food, water, etc. If you're always buying the last loaf of bread at the grocery store, that means others don't get bread when they want to buy it.

RhodesianHunter
4 replies
3d

I have a strong incentive to undercut them

Not in a supply constrained market where your rental will be occupied either way.

legitster
1 replies
3d

If your rental is $2400, and it sits on the market for 2 months, you lost potentially lost $4800. It would take a huge rent increase to justify that.

It's one thing if the software is helping landlords jack up prices to the market rate. It's quite another to convince them to collude against their best interests.

bluGill
0 replies
3d

It is a different unit every month though as renters are moving out all the time. This isn't about 1 unit that is empty or not. It is about 100+ units where it can be 89,90, or 91 empty - if the other units that are not rented pay enough higher rent because the empty is not on the market you are better off.

diebeforei485
0 replies
2d23h

Sounds like removing the supply constraints would be a better strategy.

HDThoreaun
0 replies
2d20h

If all units are being rented there is no collusion as the market clearing price is being charged. Collusion requires taking supply off the market in order to raise prices.

ericd
0 replies
2d23h

Right, assuming there’s more supply than demand. In markets with low vacancy rates like Manhattan, landlords get away with murder (terrible maintenance, making renters pay for gatekeeping rental agents, high rent despite being shitholes, etc). In markets with higher vacancy rates, prices tend to be a lot more reasonable, and units tend to be somewhat better maintained, because they don’t have the same pricing power, and if they’re too bad, they won’t be rented unless they’re extremely cheap.

tyingq
4 replies
3d2h

Interesting as airlines have been doing this for a really long time.

bluGill
2 replies
3d

Airlines do this internally all the time. However they do not share this information with each other.

tyingq
0 replies
2d21h

They don't share how many seats are left publicly, but fare changes are shared real time in a platform that distributes them. And there's quite a lot of website scraping that goes on that mostly skirts around "how many seats are left".

currymj
0 replies
2d21h

there is concern about tacit collusion if all the airlines start using the same pricing algorithms based on the same historical data. it doesn't even take a very smart pricing strategy for them to naturally learn to collude with each other.

However I would guess you will never have an email from an airline CEO that says "I really like this product...That's classic price fixing"

dylan604
0 replies
2d23h

not everyone is affected by airlines' pricing though as not everyone travels. everyone needs a place to live though

ajhurliman
15 replies
3d2h

This blows my mind that they're actually pursuing this, the two complaints are that they schemed to decrease competition among landlords and that they monopolized commercial revenue management software. Both are completely bogus.

You could say the entire profession of appraising real estate prices "decreases competition" if the first complaint is valid.

And they certainly haven't monopolized the software space, I'd never even heard of RealPage until the lawsuit, I used Rentometer. There are dozens more, predicting rent prices is hardly a novel idea.

I think that was like one of the toy problems in Andrew Ng's online ML course.

game_the0ry
10 replies
3d1h

I wouldn't be happy either if I was a landlord.

But the landlord-ing business is a tough business, and business is about to get tougher.

consteval
7 replies
2d23h

I think being a landlord is pretty much the easiest business ever. As compared to real businesses, who really produce products and really participate in competitive markets.

bluGill
4 replies
2d23h

Landlord is about luck of the tenants. A bad tenant will destroy your property costing you a lot of money. A bad tenant will not pay thus forcing you to have your property earning nothing for months until you can legally evict them. If you don't have enough tenants you lose money because you still have to pay your costs (the bank for your loan, maintenance...).

You can make a lot of money but it isn't easy money. (particularly in the early years, once you have the property paid for it is much easier)

consteval
3 replies
2d22h

Easy, you outsource your tenant management to a company that does that sort of thing. There's many highly reliable methods to get good tenants. Outsourcing to a company that specializes in that works because you're already making free money by being a landlord, so now you just make less free money.

bluGill
1 replies
2d22h

None of them are taking on the risk of what the tenant isn't paying or you don't have one. Landlord also isn't free money. You have a lot of bills to pay.

consteval
0 replies
2d20h

You have negative bills to pay, because you get money purely by virtue of having those bills.

Landlord is not a job, it's a state of ownership. Owning a company is not a job either. Being a CEO is! And you can be both. But simply owning something is not a job.

You can say property management is hard, and maybe it is. That's a separate thing and the VAST majority of landlords actually don't manage their property. So being a landlord is very, very easy.

HDThoreaun
0 replies
2d20h

Then you wont make any money

SmartJerry
1 replies
2d20h

How long have you been a landlord? If it's so easy, everyone would do it.

p_j_w
0 replies
2d17h

People don’t refrain from being landlords because it’s hard. I’ve seen people being landlords up close, it’s not. No, people refrain from being landlords because it’s so incredibly expensive to get started. Especially at a time where people are struggling to pay their own damned rent or mortgage, the cost of a second property is completely out of the question.

kerkeslager
1 replies
2d23h

If you think being in the landlord is tough, try getting a job.

I mean seriously, being a landlord is just owning something. At best, you do the work of a handyman, and get paid orders of magnitude more for that work. And if you're the average landlord, a handyman does a lot more work and does a better job because they actually have to compete. Being a landlord isn't hard, it's absurdly easy compared to the income it yields.

pessimizer
0 replies
2d23h

If you're the average landlord, you hire people to maintain the building and deal with the tenants. Rich people constantly try to convince everyone that owning things is a job. If buying a business forces you to work operating it, it's because you couldn't afford the business outright, so instead you're paying it off with sweat equity.

Certainly nothing wrong with buying a job, it's positively Jeffersonian, but the reason you're working there is because you couldn't afford anyone else.

Being a landlord is just feudalism. Most of the terminology is still the same.

infecto
2 replies
3d1h

It’s amazing your confidence when it sounds like you don’t even participate in the top N landlord space for a given market.

IIRC it has already been demonstrated that RealPage had the lion shares of the total units in certain markets.

The question is not about rent predictions but having asymmetric information that allows users of the site to effectively participate as a cartel. I am a big proponent of free markets but I think this is a worthy question to answer. When your algorithm controls more than 50% of pricing in a market does that count as collusion and how do you handle it. It seems like it might effectively eliminate the market price as you the dominant player are setting it.

It might get thrown out but I believe it’s naive and brash to just dismiss it so easily.

trinsic2
0 replies
3d1h

I'm glad these questions are being raised and bringing more awareness. I always suspected there was something that was going on to artificially raise rent prices. It sounds like collusion to me.

mistrial9
0 replies
3d1h

dismissive and slightly insulting replies to concerns about price are daily business

Animats
3 replies
2d23h

The Justice Department is being soft on corporate crime here. This is a willful Sherman Act violation. The Sherman Act has criminal penalties, but Justice is only filing a civil case. All that the complaint asks for is an injunction and costs. There's no disgorgement. No breakup of large landlords. No shutdown of RealPage.

This is worth publicizing during election season. Rents are going up due to collusion.

Animats
2 replies
2d21h

Criminal antitrust prosecutions seem to have stopped in 1977. Unclear why they never restarted.

js2
1 replies
2d3h

There are criminal antitrust cases[1], but they are hard to win. From "Why Does the Antitrust Division Keep Losing Criminal Trials?"[2]:

Even in the best of circumstances, prosecuting criminal antitrust cases can be challenging. They require a deep understanding of a particular market and proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants entered into an illegal agreement. His- torically, the Division relied on multiple witnesses to testify that an agreement, or “meeting of the minds,” existed. There is often a thin line between lawful information-gathering and unlawful price-fixing, making it difficult for jurors to understand what, exactly, constitutes criminal conduct. One former Antitrust Division attorney went so far as to say that juries “don’t like to convict in antitrust cases” because they view violations as “technical.” Another recalled seeing jurors appear shocked when they learned during trial testimony that an antitrust conviction carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. An attorney who interviewed jurors after one trial said that some jurors expressed anger that the Division was expending resources to prosecute these cases at all.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/criminal-enforcement-fine-and-ja...

[2] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/ant...

Animats
0 replies
1d21h

That's a great article. Most of the problems mentioned don't apply to landlord price-fixing. That's an issue jurors can understand. There's a large class of identifiable victims. The collusion is easy to show.

ungreased0675
1 replies
2d22h

Hopefully the DoJ (metaphorically) puts the company’s head on a pike, as a warning to others. Businesses that use technology to make life worse for the public should tread cautiously.

Ekaros
0 replies
2d21h

Not just the company. Also all of it customers who have followed their recommendations. All of them should be hit extremely hard.

underseacables
1 replies
2d23h

Reading this is depressing. The best decision I ever made was talking to a realtor, who connected me with a good lender, and buying a place. It wasn't easy but continuing to assume ownership was out of reach, and throwing money away on a rental, in hindsight would have been far worse.

bluGill
0 replies
2d23h

For some people this is the right answer. However owning has a set of downsides that make it worse for some people. Most people get too dogmatic that their situation and choice is the right one even though there are many different situations, and some people are making the wrong choice. Right vs wrong choice can often only be seen in hindsight as well.

iambateman
1 replies
3d1h

This is probably the best thing the justice dept can do to help promote a competitive market for renters.

Also…we need the government to encourage housing policy which produces a lot more housing stock.

The long-term reason housing is expensive is because there aren’t enough good houses and zoning has a lot to do with that.

acdha
0 replies
2d6h

we need the government to encourage housing policy which produces a lot more housing stock.

It’s really not “the government” but existing homeowners and especially old ones. Many politicians would love to add housing and especially density because that boosts businesses, tax revenue, use of local services, etc. but the idea that your house is going to pay for your retirement has a lot of people afraid of changes which could lower their valuation, and that makes it extremely hard to get things like zoning laws changed.

djyaz1200
1 replies
3d

A key problem with rent pricing is that a form of price fixing is imposed by fair housing law in a way that educated folks know how to circumvent, but many do not.

When a lease is advertised at X price, it is not legal to offer one monthly price to one tenant and a different one to another, so no negotiating can occur. This also allows smart landlords to price fix without software because all rates are known since the posted rate is the rate. This inhibits true price discovery.

The cheat code is to ask for free months and spread that discount over the lease term. However, this creates a situation where, at the end of the lease, the landlord has you set at the regular month price (or higher), and you have little leverage. Also your good deal is unknown to others who will continue to overpay.

Attacking a software is an easy out, attacking the system that artificially increases rents in the whole system by outlawing more aggressive tenant negotiation is the hard problem.

bluGill
0 replies
2d23h

This also allows smart landlords to price fix without software because all rates are known since the posted rate is the rate.

The rates change monthly though, and smart landlords were already changing their rent every month.

bhhaskin
1 replies
3d1h

They need to go after the landlords as well. If they just go after RealPage there is nothing stopping landlords from doing it again with different software.

bluGill
0 replies
2d23h

Only if the software exists. By going after RealPage they ensure nobody else is stupid enough to write software this way. They might use software, but that software either will not have as much information, or it will have different information that they will try to claim doesn't violate the rules. The first is legal, but makes the cartel much harder for form. The second is illegal, but it is harder to figure out how to get information and make it seem like you are not violating the rules.

adamsb6
1 replies
3h12m

Curious where the line is supposed to be for gathering market information and making pricing decisions.

Surely it would be legal if I had an employee scour all the rental listings in my area and use that to give me price distributions for similar units to the ones I’m advertising.

But according to the DOJ if I hire a company to do this, it’s not?

What if I have two units to list and it wouldn’t make sense for me to hire a whole employee for this purpose? I can’t share the cost with other small players by paying a company that specializes in this task? The big companies get this benefit due to their scale and the little guys don’t?

If I wrote a program to do this for me, would that be legal?

Could I sell the program to others?

Could I open source it?

Could I sell a hosted version of the program?

nightpool
0 replies
3h7m

That's not what RealPage did. RealPage (in landlord's terms) "uses proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and term"—not just publicly available data. Additionally, there's a market impact level to this. When you control 70% of the market, you're a monopoly, regardless of whether you're controlling market prices because you're a landlord or because you're just telling the landlord what price to use. The law ~says that you cannot control 70% of the market.

So, yes, if you sell a hosted version of your program that sets prices for 70% of the market and then use you contracts and incentives to police landlord's compliance with your program (another key feature! if RealPage was just providing the data, they would have been less of an issue, but they were also using financial kickbacks to ensure landlords kept their prices high), you are forming an illegal monopoly or price fixing cartel.

vinnyglennon
0 replies
2d17h

Howmuchrent.com is trying out rental transparency to show rental prices historically, cout cases plus reviews by tenants etc. For Ireland currently, which has most of the populated areas under rental control

superkuh
0 replies
3h5m

I can only hope they go after RealPage as vehemently and doggedly as they went after Backpage.

nickff
0 replies
2d23h

IANAL, but I am not sure that RealPage is actually violating the first two sections of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It definitely seems RealPage may be assisting in organizing price-fixing, and the word 'contract' in section one may get them in trouble, but they do not seem to be doing it "in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations", as rent is local, and I'm not sure that their contract with clients actually forces the clients to accept 'recommended rents'.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2

myprotegeai
0 replies
3d

CaaS - Collusion as a Service

jmyeet
0 replies
3d

Good.

There are two new aspects to RealPage in terms of being anticompetitive:

1. Using information from one customer to help set prices for other customers. Once you hit a certain market percentage, this effectively allows you to set prices; and

2. If everyone uses the same software that spits out the same results then this is effectively collusion even if it's not actual collusion, as in the trope of dark, shadowy figures meeting in a cigar-filled room.

Every aspect of our life is getting financialized as companies seek to extract every dollar from us. You see it with PE buying up vet clinics en masse for example. If you've wondered why your vet bills have gotten so expensive, that's probably why.

Anyway, using rent to squeeze every dollar from people in a way that raises everybody's rents with the blessing of the state (which has been the case until now) is state violence. It is using the necessity of shelter to cerce money from you.

People in general don't see this sort of thing as violence but it is. Just like polie crackdowns on protests are state violence.

jihadjihad
0 replies
3h17m

"Over a century ago, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act to protect competition in the marketplace. As the Supreme Court has explained, the “central evil” addressed by Section 1 of that Act is “the elimination of competition that would otherwise exist,” including competition on prices.

When the Sherman Act was passed, an anticompetitive scheme might have looked like robber barons shaking hands at a secret meeting.

Today, it looks like landlords using mathematical algorithms to align their rents."

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-merrick-...

duped
0 replies
3h1m

Housing prices are publicly available information, rents should be too.

dfee
0 replies
3h15m

I don’t know much about the company or situation, admittedly. But this wasn’t the strongest claim:

they said their probe involved data scientists who dug into computer code to understand how these algorithms set prices
dang
0 replies
18m

Related. Others?

San Francisco seeks ban of software critics say is used to inflate rents - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41227792 - Aug 2024 (185 comments)

San Francisco to Ban Rent-Setting Software Amid Gouging Worry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41163936 - Aug 2024 (48 comments)

San Francisco Moves to Ban Anti-Competitive Rent Software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41155792 - Aug 2024 (7 comments)

San Francisco to ban software that "enables price collusion" by landlords - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133143 - Aug 2024 (17 comments)

Hoping to cut San Francisco rents, supervisors approve software-pricing ban - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41125232 - Aug 2024 (1 comment)

Why US renters are taking corporate landlords to court - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40261647 - May 2024 (110 comments)

Rents are soaring. Is RealPage to blame? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39992731 - April 2024 (207 comments)

Lawmakers Seeking to Outlaw Rent Price Fixing Reported by Propublica - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206493 - Jan 2024 (56 comments)

Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38114264 - Nov 2023 (375 comments)

The rent is too damn algorithmic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37829575 - Oct 2023 (147 comments)

Landlord Software Is Making Life Hell for Renters, Report Says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35786820 - May 2023 (17 comments)

I saw RealPage's crappy rent-jacking-up software so you don't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926683 - Feb 2023 (403 comments)

DOJ will examine whether RealPage helped landlords coordinate rent increases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744136 - Nov 2022 (123 comments)

RealPage and landlords illegally created a 'cartel' to set prices, lawsuit says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33633541 - Nov 2022 (3 comments)

US senator seeks antitrust review of apartment price-setting software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33444092 - Nov 2022 (6 comments)

Lawsuit filed against rent-setting software RealPage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33317414 - Oct 2022 (50 comments)

Clever algorithm may be what's driving rent prices so high - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33313028 - Oct 2022 (6 comments)

Rent going up? One company’s algorithm could be why - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33224502 - Oct 2022 (279 comments)

Landlords use software to set rental rates - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3294248 - Nov 2011 (5 comments)

cyanydeez
0 replies
1h43m

Of course, there not thing wrong with algorithms, until you go above and beyond and try to force everyone to obey it's recommendations.

Which they did.

coding123
0 replies
3d

part of the issue is that Americans don't haggle prices.

adolph
0 replies
3d1h

I think RealPage foot-gunned their corporate structure and marketing by being so blatant about it. If they had set up a separate structure that offered "benchmarking" like what is used in healthcare[0] and other industries, they could have performed the same service but avoided legal trouble.

0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5379508/

__MatrixMan__
0 replies
2d20h

They should take a page out of the FBI's book: leave the software up as a honeypot, sue the users into oblivion, and use the proceeds to fund further antitrust operations.

Otherwise we're just going to end up with the same software back from the grave, but with no company behind it to sue this time.

EasyMark
0 replies
2d13h

This is definitely one of those companies I would love to see be completely taken down. We need to revise monopoly and cartel laws because I suspect the current Supreme Court will not see eye-to-eye with the DOJ on this as they are strict textualists now. If the law doesn’t say “cartel by intention of digital equivalency” or something else descriptive I don’t think SCOTUS will bite any longer or apply common sense interpretation as any good judge should.

BoiledCabbage
0 replies
2h53m

Market competition is essential for a functioning market. Eliminating software whose purpose is to prevent the market from competing on price is a huge win.

We won't miss them.

1vuio0pswjnm7
0 replies
2d19h

Shooting fish in a barrel.