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DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

justice.gov

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Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#541

Post by thfuran »

alasdair_ wrote: post #505
hoosieree wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data brokers are a scourge. They should be illegal, or at the very least regulated. For example, here's an idea for one such regulation: If the company purchases aggregated salary data, they must publish their own salaries for at least 1 year.

Just make PII copyright of the person it identifies, similar to how a "likeness" is owned by a person. Then sue for copyright infringement.

Then all the five page long boilerplate contracts for every service you use are just going to add another clause saying that they get an irrevocable, transferable license to the data they collect. Probably without telling you because there's already a clause saying they're allowed to change the contract without notice.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#542

Post by metadat »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #447
HelloMcFly wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else runs into this issue, typically the direct route for things like this is to get involved a discussion with someone in your Total Rewards / Global Compensation team. These are usually the people that confirm the mapping of internal positions to benchmarks, and there is huge between-organizations variability in the quality behind that process. Many times normal managers or more generalist HR Partners (es…

HR is not your friend. Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro is a recommended read. My advice; get a better offer elsewhere, then see if HR wants to pay you your worth.

Thanks for the interesting recommendation.

The book you referenced is from 2005, has the game evolved in the past 20 years? My friends who work in HR seem to think so.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#543

Post by crooked-v »

SideQuark wrote: post #537

So companies in the future will not be able to subscribe to another companies algorithms? How is this a lot different? Tons of companies use credit bureaus to get the sameCredit data for pricing loans to people. Remove this and companies will charge consumers lots more since they'll have to face more risk. Tons of companies use prices when setting contracts in a ton of products (metals, food, stocks, and on and on) a…

Differences here include a system where landlords are contractually required to supply all their rent data to RealPage and are only allowed to set their own rents if they apply for exemptions first. It's very much designed all the way through to have every effect of mass collusion with the technicality of landlords not directly making agreements with each other about rental prices.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#544

Post by Loughla »

staticautomatic wrote: post #533
Loughla wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently fighting this. The benchmark for my team is 10-15% lower than just our area. And 30-40% lower than the nation. And it's because we get lumped in with lower skilled titles because of the title scheme on our campus. I can't get any traction with admin or HR, and we're both hemorrhaging people and can't bring in qualified new candidates. It's very frustrating.

I just went through this last week and the trick was getting my finance director to tell HR that she approved the higher amount I wanted to offer. HR will play games with your budget until you take the excuse away.

The problem is the Dean for that area (is a college by the way) is a cowardly little chicken shit bitch who will not rock the boat for any reason.

We have history if you couldn't tell.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#545

Post by sleepybrett »

andrewmutz wrote: post #531
wh0knows wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This definitely requires some citations. There is no evidence that you are presenting that supports the 2-5% claim. I don’t think you are fully understanding the impact of price collusion or the suit presented here. The DOJ very clearly thinks this is anticompetitive.

Honestly the strongest argument I've heard that these algorithms are anticompetitive is "The DoJ thinks they are". So maybe there's some non-public information of anticompetitive behavior. We don't know how many housing units use Realpage pricing algorithms in 2024, but in 2017 when Realpage bought the tech, it was being used in 1.5 million rentals ( https://www.realpage.com/news/realpage-to-acquire-lease-rent... ) a…

The doj doesn't lose cases like these, and doesn't bring cases that are absolute slam dunks.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#546

Post by vundercind »

Animats wrote: post #210
Animats wrote: post #187

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.

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

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

You want the history section, “Rise of the Chicago School (1970s–present)”

Ten-to-one it’s connected to the postwar rise of and later diversification (into more narrowly interest-promoting areas with less concern about whether advancing those interests was good or bad governance) think tanks, too. Most bad economic policy, jurisprudence, and law from the ‘70s on seem to be.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#547

Post by sleepybrett »

andrewmutz wrote: post #538
brandonfro wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the press release: "The complaint separately alleges that RealPage has unlawfully maintained its monopoly over commercial revenue management software for multi-family dwellings in the United States, in which RealPage commands approximately 80% market share."

That’s 80% of companies who are using revenue management software are using Realpage, not that 80% of rental units are using Realpage revenue management software

... yeah that's pretty much all of them minus some mom and pops who manage themselves. And from personal experience those mom and pops are selling out to management companies now so a whole neighborhood of single family rentals might be actually controlled by just one or two companies.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#548

Post by sleepybrett »

claytonjy wrote: post #512
andrewmutz wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the best of my understanding I think the technology does drive up prices, but not in an anticompetitive way. I know people get really passionate about this, so I don't want to argue with people on hacker news about it, but to the best of my understanding this is what is happening: Rental prices in the USA keep going up primarily due to a housing shortage. Revenue optimization algorithms like realpage's do genuinel…

do we know roughly how common use of this or similar technologies are in various markets? I was under the impression this was quite common, though I have no evidence and would love to be shown otherwise!

If it is, they better be covering their tracks.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#549

Post by RayVR »

SideQuark wrote: post #537

So companies in the future will not be able to subscribe to another companies algorithms? How is this a lot different? Tons of companies use credit bureaus to get the sameCredit data for pricing loans to people. Remove this and companies will charge consumers lots more since they'll have to face more risk. Tons of companies use prices when setting contracts in a ton of products (metals, food, stocks, and on and on) a…

I think if you read into the details you wouldn’t make such an obviously naive argument.

The services provided by companies like realpage remove the ability to negotiate.

More importantly, they explicitly manipulate supply coming into the market by removing competition.

Take this example: a lease renewal offer is made available, the price is actually higher if the termination date corresponds to relatively high levels of expected supply influx within the existing property (assuming multiple units) AND across other properties in the same geographic area using realpage or its ilk.

This allows landlords to theoretically offload the collusion onto companies like realpage, for a price.

In a properly functioning market, price discovery is a function of the market, not artificial control exerted by a centralized power with one-sided incentives.

Re: DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

#550

Post by crooked-v »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #55
Manuel_D wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 bui…

Developers don't build supply because most US cities have made it de facto illegal to do so.

For the most extreme case, check out San Francisco, where as of June the city had permitted a grand total of 16 housing units. What developer is even going to bother trying under conditions like that?

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