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DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters

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

#591

Post by A1kmm »

tqi wrote: post #470
jasode wrote: post #19

>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…

What I'm having a hard time understanding is why RealPage cared about "compliance" in the first place - do they charge as a % of rent? That seems nuts, I would imagine landlords hate that. If not % of rent then I can't understand why the company would want rents to be higher across the board.

I don't know about RealPage in particular. But the dynamics could be similar to (or an example of) a cartel.

Cartels generally don't tolerate a cartel member undercutting their prices. Cartels are effectively in a prisoner's dilemma situation:

* If no one defects (i.e. everyone sticks to the cartel price), the cartel members get the highest price, and get the most profits. * If one party defects and goes slightly below the cartel price, while everyone else stays loyal to the cartel pricing, the defecting party gets the most business at a price only slightly below the cartel price, and makes lots of profit. * If all parties defect, there is no cartel any more, and profits are reduced.

So cartel members do not want other cartel members to defect. Cartel organisers get paid because the value of the cartel is only there if defection (i.e. not sticking to the cartel price) is controlled - so it is also in the interest of the organisers to prevent this.

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

#592

Post by suslik »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #579
null0pointer wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: How do people on HN reconcile the idea that tech salaries are suppressed with advocating for remote work and opening employment to the global market where employees are often paid much much less than in the US?

Remote work and offshore work aren't inherently the same thing. If you're a company with offices in New York City and San Francisco and you hire someone in San Diego or Rochester, you're still dealing with the laws of the same states and federal government. Even someone in Massachusetts or Texas is probably not a big deal. But if you want to hire someone in Poland or Korea, do you even know what their laws are ? How…

All these issues (except, perhaps, the need to switch to asynchronous way of working due to time zones) are these days solved by specialized services for a flat, and not too high, fee; honestly, if there’s a will to hire internationally, there is a way.

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

#593

Post by sleepybrett »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #578
sleepybrett wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rub is that if store and store b got together and negotiated a price they would stick to and not try to undercut each other, that's price fixing, and that is what realpage is doing on a MASSIVE scale. 'Cartel/Corporate' owners own ~70% of the units in Seattle. 11 total companies (big names you should know like gray star and equity residential), to the one they all use realpage. That's 70% of the market price fixe…

Before your second paragraph: I Googled about it and found this ProPublica story: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r... The exact quote: > In one neighborhood in Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of apartments were overseen by just 10 property managers, every single one of which used pricing software sold by RealPage. To be clear, that is "one neighborhood" in Seattle. Your second paragraph mak…

That neighborhood is the neighborhood amazon is in South Lake Union. But as far as I can tell every corporate building in town uses them which is a wild amount of buildings.

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

#594

Post by SideQuark »

vineyardmike wrote: post #583
SideQuark wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or I simply stop using their pricing, undercut my competitors, and gain tenants. Same as before. The US has around 15million landlords, 20+ million units. RealPage has ~6000 customers. It's pretty hard to set market prices with literally millions of competing landlords.

> Or I simply stop using their pricing, undercut my competitors, and gain tenants. Same as before. Except the landlords signed a contract... they legally bound themselves to using their pricing. Also the market keeps changing, so you'll need their pricing in the future (so you can't break your contracts), or you'll need to do your own independent market research without access to their data. > It's pretty hard to set…

> signed a contract

Contracts aren't infinite. And contracts have to follow the law.

> so you'll need their pricing in the future (so you can't break your contracts), or you'll need to do your own independent market research without access to their data

>The entire US is not one market.

Are you trying to claim that of the millions of landlords, somehow they are clustered away from bigger markets and that RealPage controls all in any given area?

Here's an idea: demonstrate that in some big market that RealPage controls the majority of the rental units, otherwise it's ludicrous to say they are setting prices somehow arbitrarily. You can't since it's not true. I think not.

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

#595

Post by datavirtue »

Loughla wrote: post #522
HelloMcFly wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, yes. This is not an uncommon managerial problem that is often resolved (not always; I've had both experiences), though perhaps not in a timely manner.

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.

My company just googles the position title and slaps that number in the job description. Not going well.

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

#596

Post by pc86 »

BeetleB wrote: post #400
pc86 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes on vacant rental units means they'll be sold sooner, and increases the odds they'll be sold to an occupant instead of a speculator. I am a capitalist above basically anything else but that sounds great to me (and I already own a home and will likely never move again). > Almost everyone I know who purchases houses/apartments to rent them would get out of the business if vacancies were taxed Yes, you've successfu…

> We should definitely remove fixed-interest mortgages for non-owner occupied purchases. Just as with single payer health care: While it works very well in other countries, people in the US will insist it will fail here. :-)

There are legitimate concerns or arguments against a single national government-run healthcare system covering 330 million people in 50 different states (medicare/caid notwithstanding, basically all healthcare is regulated state by state and not federally).

I don't know anything arguing that adjustable-rate mortgages will "fail" in the US (we have them already), especially focused specifically toward/against non-owner occupied properties, just that it would negatively affect them and they don't want to do it.

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

#597

Post by [deleted] »

analog31 wrote: post #493
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.

Possession of the data should be illegal. It can be enforced through statutory damages, similar to the damages paid for sharing copyrighted music recordings and movies.

[deleted]

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

#598

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #579
null0pointer wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: How do people on HN reconcile the idea that tech salaries are suppressed with advocating for remote work and opening employment to the global market where employees are often paid much much less than in the US?

Remote work and offshore work aren't inherently the same thing. If you're a company with offices in New York City and San Francisco and you hire someone in San Diego or Rochester, you're still dealing with the laws of the same states and federal government. Even someone in Massachusetts or Texas is probably not a big deal. But if you want to hire someone in Poland or Korea, do you even know what their laws are ? How…

[deleted]

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

#599

Post by bick_nyers »

bobthepanda wrote: post #473
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The NYT recently did a piece on how the tendrils of the housing crisis have made it out to places like Kalamazoo, MI that are not really traditionally high COL cities with booming economies. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/business/economy/housing-... We are running out of cheap places to live in. Remote work has mostly pushed the crisis to other places without a corresponding pressure release in the high COL area…

I can't read the article because of the paywall, but Kalamazoo is unique due to the Kalamazoo Promise, where college tuition (in the state of MI) is paid for if you attend Kalamazoo Public Schools. For me that was $60k of tuition I didn't have to take out loans for. Housing/grocery prices have gone up there but not nearly as dramatically as other places.

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

#600

Post by datavirtue »

crowcroft wrote: post #475
ndesaulniers wrote: post #417

Companies are culluding to suppress wages by algorithm, too. Look up a company called Aon, and their product called Radford Data & Analytics.

Applying macro data to micro use cases without appropriate carve outs is one of the greatest sins in statistics, and yet it happens everywhere.

You just sailed over managements and HRs heads.
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