“None of the companies admitted fault or liability. They did, however, agree to stop providing Realpage with their nonpublic data for use as an input in Realpage’s revenue management system’s price recommendations, and to stop using Realpage’s RMS in ways that use competitors’ non-public data to inform pricing recommendations”.
Okay but Realpage has a decade of real pricing data that it can use to continue informing these rental companies and outside of them having extremely hard boundaries in their service this is just going to happen again.
This doesn’t do a whole lot to address the actual issue, and these companies aren’t going to stop colluding over a wrist slap like this.
Al la dc rent registry, which I always thought was ironic because doesn’t this create a database where landlords can consider prices based on others… but I guess it would be public in this case.
Well the point of market based interventions and government regulations like this is primarily to reduce information asymmetry. You still ultimately need to increase supply or reduce demand to move price.
I don’t see why rental agreements can’t be registered with the county like house sales are. It would also eliminate the need for squatter laws, as it would be trivial for police to pull up the county website and see who belongs in the home.
Americans are too privacy focused to accept this, but I could easily see a cottage industry of "registered agents" popping up around it who sign leases on behalf of individuals and shield them from public scrutiny.
Alternatively we could keep the names private. A cryptographic solution would easily serve the need of authorities verifying the right person is in a place without identification, but good luck figuring out how to ensure the tenant has their keys somehow since in the US there are zero pieces of identification you can ensure every citizen has.
American's seem to only care about privacy from the government, but wanting privacy from trillion dollar corporations? They keep the stock market high and provide value to their major investors and everyone's retirement accounts so obviously its fully within their rights to spy on us 24/7. /s
I wonder what empirical and theoretical substance there is to the idea that the cost of living is due to lack of competition (in zero-to-one markets), and that competition is the solution to much of this.
On that basis, the 'free market' should be called the 'free, competitive market' - without competition, it has little value. Businesses should be required to compete and to opeerate in competitive markets. Anything anti-competitive should be treated harshly.
>> Businesses should be required to compete and to opeerate in competitive markets.
I'm not sure I understand where you are going with this? Are you suggesting that a new product cannot enter a market without a number of simultaneous competitors?
If I want to roll out fibre to an area that doesn't have it, can I? If I want to build a fresh-produce store in a town that doesn't have one, then I need to find someone else to compete with?
Lots and lots of businesses operate as quasi-monopolies if you look hard enough. Especially in smaller and rural environments. Lots and lots of places have one gas station, one mechanic, one vet, one doctor, one diner and so on.
Your use of the word "require" seems difficult to implement. What if no-one wants to compete with me? If Apple stops making Macs, does MS have to stop making Windows?
I filed my claim, and based on their calculator this might be the most serious check from a class action (assuming I get the full amount). For me its ~1.5k between 3 named landlords.
I've been saying this for a while, but there is a cottage industry like RealPage in pretty much every industry. These companies need to be slammed out of existence for anti-competitive pricing and collusion. So much corruption. I'm so sick of fraud and corruption.
It's both funny and sad to see the mental gymnastics of people trying to find solutions to this when the solution is real simple: it's public ownership.
Housing needs to be decommodified. It needs to stop being a retirement plan. We need to stop letting people hoard it. We need to stop subsidizing exurbs and making it illegal to build the kind of walkable communities people actually like. Case in point: Red Vienna [1].
As another commenter noted, this is in every industry. Utilities are a particularly bad one including telcos. All the best ISPs in the US are municipally owned. Chattanooga was the first really big poster child for this.
Privatization of all these things is just rent-seeking behavior.
So many of society's problems come down to housing being too expensive. Anything that makes it expensive needs to be stamped out and that includes RealPage as well as Airbnb/VRBO.
Which major metropolitan city in America is building half a dozen or more entire apartment buildings in its downtown inner and outer rings, specifically to implement what you’re describing?
Hint: it has an international airport :)
Your comment is so outrage-focused that I’m not inclined to help you make your argument. I largely agree with your point, but dialing back the rhetorical pathos would make it more persuasive.
Okay but Realpage has a decade of real pricing data that it can use to continue informing these rental companies and outside of them having extremely hard boundaries in their service this is just going to happen again.
This doesn’t do a whole lot to address the actual issue, and these companies aren’t going to stop colluding over a wrist slap like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion
However, that's not a systematic method for lower prices. It just prevents individual cases of price gouging.
https://rentregistry.dc.gov/
(Unless the other party to the contract deliberately asks you in the contract to keep it quiet. But that's something you need to actively agree to.)
Alternatively we could keep the names private. A cryptographic solution would easily serve the need of authorities verifying the right person is in a place without identification, but good luck figuring out how to ensure the tenant has their keys somehow since in the US there are zero pieces of identification you can ensure every citizen has.
On that basis, the 'free market' should be called the 'free, competitive market' - without competition, it has little value. Businesses should be required to compete and to opeerate in competitive markets. Anything anti-competitive should be treated harshly.
I'm not sure I understand where you are going with this? Are you suggesting that a new product cannot enter a market without a number of simultaneous competitors?
If I want to roll out fibre to an area that doesn't have it, can I? If I want to build a fresh-produce store in a town that doesn't have one, then I need to find someone else to compete with?
Lots and lots of businesses operate as quasi-monopolies if you look hard enough. Especially in smaller and rural environments. Lots and lots of places have one gas station, one mechanic, one vet, one doctor, one diner and so on.
Your use of the word "require" seems difficult to implement. What if no-one wants to compete with me? If Apple stops making Macs, does MS have to stop making Windows?
(Seven has been experimentally determined, but I can't recall where.)
If you have examples of such a company in other industries, please share.
Housing needs to be decommodified. It needs to stop being a retirement plan. We need to stop letting people hoard it. We need to stop subsidizing exurbs and making it illegal to build the kind of walkable communities people actually like. Case in point: Red Vienna [1].
As another commenter noted, this is in every industry. Utilities are a particularly bad one including telcos. All the best ISPs in the US are municipally owned. Chattanooga was the first really big poster child for this.
Privatization of all these things is just rent-seeking behavior.
So many of society's problems come down to housing being too expensive. Anything that makes it expensive needs to be stamped out and that includes RealPage as well as Airbnb/VRBO.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY&t=191s
Hint: it has an international airport :)
Your comment is so outrage-focused that I’m not inclined to help you make your argument. I largely agree with your point, but dialing back the rhetorical pathos would make it more persuasive.