DOJ Backs Tenants in Case Alleging Price-Fixing by Big Landlords and a Real Estate Tech Company
www.propublica.org
A ProPublica investigation last year about RealPage’s rent-setting software led to federal lawsuits asserting inflated apartment prices.

U.S. Department of Justice backs tenants in case alleging algorithmic price-fixing by big landlords and real estate tech company RealPage::ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

  • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    201·
    1 year ago

    “Automating an anticompetitive scheme does not make it less anticompetitive,” the DOJ said.

    As described in federal lawsuits filed by tenants, RealPage invited concerted action among landlords, including the sharing of nonpublic data with the software, with the purpose of raising rents, prosecutors wrote in their memorandum. The arrangement is still price-fixing regardless of whether competing landlords ever communicated with one another about prices, prosecutors said.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      221·
      1 year ago

      The problem is they already succeeded. There will unlikely be any ruling telling them they have to now reduce rents to reasonable levels.

      They will be unlikely to let go of these profits.

      EDIT: Just came back with the deets. The application they use for this is called YieldStar. They bought YieldStar in 2002. They have potentially been doing this for twenty fucking years now. The idea that we could go back and undo what they have done is lunacy. Our government can barely even pass a budget. They’re certainly not going to make it so that rents in every market covered by YieldStar go back down to what they were 20 years ago, especially because that’s literally not sustainable with maintenance costs as they currently are.

      https://www.realpage.com/news/realpage-acquires-yieldstar-multifamily-revenue-management-system/

      Even if the DOJ shuts this down and prevents it from happening again in the future, they had twenty years to slowly raise rents all over the country. This is why people who are in their 40’s suddenly can’t afford places that they could afford in their 20’s.