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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

#81

Post by legitster »

sangnoir wrote: post #50
legitster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...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…

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.

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

#82

Post by Manuel_D »

Carrok wrote: post #74
Manuel_D wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 woul…

> 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.

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.

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

#83

Post by biggoodwolf »

Manuel_D wrote: post #25
Carrok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

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

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

#84

Post by Manuel_D »

biggoodwolf wrote: post #83
Manuel_D wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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.

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

#85

Post by seydor »

legitster wrote: post #30

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 typ…

> 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.

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

#86

Post by kelnos »

legitster wrote: post #66
Carrok wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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?

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

#87

Post by switch007 »

Alupis wrote: post #67
Carrok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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…

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.

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

#88

Post by matwood »

bick_nyers wrote: post #60
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…

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…

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.

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

#89

Post by sophacles »

legitster wrote: post #43
lukev wrote: post #16

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…

[flagged]

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".

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

#90

Post by biggoodwolf »

Manuel_D wrote: post #24
bearjaws wrote: post #7

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 pr…

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…

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