14 ms·

> Specifically, every morning, RealPage provides participating Lessors with recommended price levels. ... If Lessors wish to diverge from the “approved pricing”

> Specifically, every morning, RealPage provides participating Lessors with recommended price levels. ... If Lessors wish to diverge from the “approved pricing” they must submit reasoning for doing so and await approval. ... But RealPage emphasizes the need for discipline among participating Lessors and urges them that for its coordinated algorithmic pricing to be the most successful in increasing rents, participating Lessors must adopt RealPage’s pricing at least 80% of the time. It's hard to imagine a clearer, more blatant description of cartel price fixing. This is like calling your pyramid scheme "Pyramidal Inc.".

peoplearepeople 4y ago
> await approval Sure seems like RealPage is price fixing then
- vel0city 4y ago
  The approval wouldn't be from RealPage, it would be from that employee's supervisor. Essentially, one can configure RealPage (and RealPage seems to make this suggestion) to use their auto-price tool by default and require management approvals if employees want to set the price to something else. If I'm buying a Playstation at Walmart, chances are the person at the checkout counter can't change the price directly and give me a discount. They probably can call over a manager who could approve a price change because they can see I'm a really cool person who should get $50 off this Playstation.
  - solarmist 4y ago
    No, the article is very clear. There is approvals team that that has to press the button in addition to management. To slow down/increase friction the process even more.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      > There is approvals team that that has to press the button in addition to management. I agree the article is very clear. The approvals team is the management of the property. From the article: > If there is a disagreement between the participating Lessor and the RealPage Pricing Advisor, the dispute is often elevated to the Lessor’s management for resolution, and specific reasons justifying a departure from RealPage’s pricing level are usually required. This snippet is in the "..." from the above comment. Funny they snipped out this extremely critical part of the quote to show who does the approval. Where does it say RealPage employees need to approve the price?
      - notahacker 4y ago
        Both the article and the court filing are unclear about who "the Lessor's management" is, but the Lessor is quite clearly defined as the party which is making property available for lease It's difficult to imagine a reason why a property owner should have to appeal to "management" to vary the prices of their own asset that doesn't involve "management" being an cartel body.
        vel0city 4y ago
        Yeah, its unclear because the Lessor's management could be a property management company, the ownership of the property, a leasing team supervisor, etc. There's a lot of ways you can set up your property ownership/management/leasing teams, so there wouldn't be a single point to say "the lessor's manager". However, that management is not RealPage.
        notahacker 4y ago
        But, according to the filing, there is a person called a "RealPage Pricing Advisor" who is typically the only party in the loop with the ability to settle the disagreement without seeking further approvals. And it's not exactly a normal arrangement for the "Lessor's employees with pricing responsibility" to have prices dictated to them by a third party company which also sets the Lessor's competitors' prices. Similarly, if that store manager at Walmart you mentioned had to seek approval from the same advisor that does prices for K-mart and Target to adjust the amount on the till, I don't think one could argue that this wasn't price fixing so long as he was still able to get you the discount by petitioning the Walton Family...
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    First, how do you not have a 'you're posting too fast' cooldown with all the posts you are making on this thread? Second, this isn't playstation though is it? But staying with this example, if I go get a $50 meal my server very much can adjust my bill 'I removed X', 'I comped Y' happens all the time. If I go to a matress store/furniture store the sales person very much has the ability to lower my price arbitrarily on items way more expensive than a Playstation. Your 1 example isn't really all that relevant.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      What, you didn't buy HN Premium+ for the 10x posting rate? J/K, I believe it has something to do with karma level. You still have a pretty low karma amount. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
    - vel0city 4y ago
      > First, how do you not have a 'you're posting too fast' cooldown with all the posts you are making on this thread? I dunno, I definitely have some posts where I have to wait for the reply link to show up to write a reply. > if I go get a $50 meal my server very much can adjust my bill 'I removed X', 'I comped Y' happens all the time. And usually behind the scenes they got a supervisor or manager approval for doing such a thing, or will probably have to explain the deviance from normal pricing later. > If I go to a matress store/furniture store the sales person very much has the ability to lower my price arbitrarily on items way more expensive than a Playstation. Most times that I've negotiated pricing for things (cars, mattresses, etc.) outside of private party the final price was subject to some kind of supervisor/manager approval. I can't think of a single time where the final sale for some negotiated price didn't have some approval process to it. If a business just allows their front of line employees to arbitrarily set prices without any kind of review, their business probably isn't going to do too well. The front of line sales people probably don't have all the information as to why the company is wanting to set the prices a certain way, and without that information they're setting prices rather arbitrarily. This could lead to some pretty massive damages to the company. If a waiter just decides to start only charging $1 for the $5 burgers, the business is going to have a problem.
kortilla 4y ago
>It's hard to imagine a clearer, more blatant description of cartel price fixing. Uh, OPEC?
- lordnacho 4y ago
  C isn't for cartel
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    OPEC is literally a cartel. The spelling is meaningless, and nobody even said that C stands for cartel. cartel [1] noun a group of similar independent companies who join together to control prices and limit competition: * an oil cartel [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/cartel https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/carte...
    - lordnacho 4y ago
      I don't deny they are a cartel, it just looked like GP thought that it was somehow clear from the name.
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  While OPEC is a cartel, it does not fix prices. It reduces or increases supply, and then the market decides price organically based on laws of supply & demand. So not quite the same.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    ...with the intention of fixing prices.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    That's like saying the sky isn't really blue, when someone asks you the color. "As far as wavelengths go, Earth's sky really is a bluish violet. But because of our eyes we see it as pale blue." [1] Saying OPEC doesn't fix prices is a nonsense statement that does nothing but split hairs. OPEC engages in price fixing as set forth by the FTC, though they are not subject to the FTC. [2] Price fixing is a term of art that doesn't just mean the specific price of a sale is fixed. Price fixing can also mean that prices are indirectly fixed by production quotas or capacity. OPEC exists for the very reason to set production quotas or capacity. "OPEC's objective is to co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries" [3] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/01/11/earths-skies-are-violet-we-just-see-them-as-blue/?sh=4dd44f99735f https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/01/11/earth... [2] https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-competitors/price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... [3] https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/24.htm https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/24.htm
ordinaryradical 4y ago
This is the smoking gun, imo. It doesn’t matter if it’s accomplished via software, AI, or anything else—a blatant attempt to coordinate and coerce landlords into a given pricing regime is the definition of price fixing. I suspect there’s a lot of other price coordination schemes going on under the surface of our society just like this. The pandemic gave them cover, but the coordinated effort to raise prices destroys the efficient market hypothesis as does the gargantuan nature (and influence) of single actors within industries. There is no future for capitalism without harsh enforcement and trust-busting on this front.
- dheera 4y ago
  > destroys the efficient market hypothesis > There is no future for capitalism My honest opinion -- We don't need an efficient market. We don't need extreme capitalism. We need housing for everyone. We need government to step in and cap housing prices, build more housing, and drive away the 80-year-old farts with 15 houses still trying to extract money from poor college students. Housing should be built to LIVE in, not as an investment.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    I’d be fine with them just building more housing and taxing either land value or empty units.
    - dheera 4y ago
      Taxing empty units -- yes, 100% Taxing land value -- this unfortunately leads to them passing on the taxes to renters, and rental housing becomes ever more unaffordable
      - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        the advantage of taxing land value is that you can pass on less tax for higher density which means higher density housing gets higher returns for landlords incentivizing construction.
pilarphosol 4y ago
[dead]
jollyllama 4y ago
I think landlords have already been doing this even before software existed. There is an additional mechanism that creates this dynamic, where properties (especially commercial ones) are valued based on the price of leases. For this reason, it can be better for landlords to let a property stay empty with a higher listed rent than to let it open up, if they are renewing their lease or borrowing against it.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Doesn’t matter, now they are openly colluding through a company. A competent government can create a RICO equivalent and penalize these animals, if it wanted to.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Government officials whose campaigns are funded by the potential members of the RICO suit are rarely ones to push for said suit.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  There’s two different types of price collusion, and only one is illegal. The first is using public signals (ie looking at competitors prices) and setting yours to match. This is perfectly acceptable, and is usually unspokenly enforced by tit-for-tat strategies. The second is when you get together and say, “1bd studios are $1200, agreed?” This explicit coordination is illegal. IANAL, but this looks closer to the second.
  - DaveExeter 4y ago
    >This is perfectly acceptable Not "perfectly". I think some companies have gotten into trouble doing this.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  I’ve heard from non-authorities sources that loans for the comercial properties have covenants that would severely financially punish the landlord for lowering the rent. Enough of these restrictions in a single location would have a monopolistic effect on pricing paid for by landlords who now have to carry these loans without tenants. Usually it’s expensive to distort a market enough to maintain monopoly pricing but not if you can get someone else that is optimistic, naive, or desperate to pay for it.
bitwize 4y ago
> This is like calling your pyramid scheme "Pyramidal Inc.". (in Coach Z voice) "That happened one time!" TransAmerica owns an insurance MLM called World Financial Group. I was unfortunate enough to be approached by one of their salespeople at a meetup, and the number on the business card he gave me was, I shit you not, 1-800-PYRAMID. A reference to the TransAmerica Pyramid Building in San Francisco, but still.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Gotta love how capital gets all high and mighty about unions, while getting repeatedly caught with various forms of collusion, such as the Big Tech salary collusion a decade ago or cartoon-villain-bad levels of price fixing as we see here. Basically, it boils down to, "do as I say, not as I do." Is it possible for the suit to result in charges brought against all users of RealPage? They are active participants, after all.
- d0gsg0w00f 4y ago
  Well, cartels aren't capitalism. Capitalism would be someone coming in and realizing the prices are inflated and undercut the rent prices while still being profitable.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    "Capitalism" can be a lot of things, including things which privilege capital without regard to market freedom for labor or consumer. Cartels certainly aren't free markets. To keep those you need policy which keeps them that way.
    - SMAAART 4y ago
      George Orwell, of 1984 fame, would approve of this comment.
      - wwweston 4y ago
        Hard to say for sure, but probably correct: Orwell seemed to be a critic of totalist ideologies, certainly totalitarian communism but he also had words for unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism.
        SMAAART 4y ago
        My comment was not political in nature, I was referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak
idopmstuff 4y ago
I was all ready to come into the comments with "Sure this is annoying, but it's a symptom of the underlying problem of a lack of housing caused by poor housing policy." Then I got to this paragraph, and yeah, no, this just clearly price fixing. You have to convince your software provider to let you charge a price that's different than what they want you to charge? That is truly bananas.
- andrewstuart2 4y ago
  That's because you're not so much convincing the software provider as you are the cartel who wants prices to rise as effectively as possible.
- Aunche 4y ago
  If you take the plaintiff's allegations at face value, of course the defendant is going to sound guilty. The reason why I'm skeptical is because "cartel as a service" doesn't make any sense as a business model. Realpage doesn't gain anything from creating a cartel because they don't own the homes. They advertise that they maximize profits for landlords. If they are indeed price fixing, they aren't fulfilling their promise to their customers. Edit: As with all just about anything. It looks like, people are hostile of the idea of "presumption of innocence" when that requires them to question their priors.
  - idopmstuff 4y ago
    > If they are indeed price fixing, they aren't fulfilling their promise to their customers. They definitely are! Price fixing ensures higher rent for the whole cartel (which is comprised of their customers). And enforcing cooperation is decidedly a good thing, because cooperation is required to keep prices artificially inflated. What Realpage gains from creating a cartel is a really sticky customer base. I don't think it makes sense as a model because it seems to be clearly illegal, but putting that aside they're delivering a lot of value to their customers and are getting paid for it - it's definitely a sensible business model.
    - Aunche 4y ago
exabrial 4y ago
Holy hell. Can we please sue these fuckers into oblivion and every apartment complex that participated?
jfghi 4y ago
More modern I think would be PRMD Solutions
- munificent 4y ago
  prmd.eth
arrosenberg 4y ago
Honestly. The CEO and General Counsel? Straight to jail for economic crimes. They're stealing from the regular people.
yterdy 4y ago
Here's a doc that was recently scrubbed from the marketing page of the company, Entrata, that provides software to my property manager (thank you, Archive.org). https://imgur.com/a/D3gsLBL https://imgur.com/a/D3gsLBL If there's any integrity left in our legal system, this will be a slam dunk for renters.
paulgb 4y ago
I thought maybe the article was cutting out context from the source, so I read the source[1], and not only was the article not taking it out of context, there are even more damning quotes: > As one Lessor explains, while “we are all technically competitors,” RealPage “helps us work together,” “to work with a community in pricing strategies, not to work separately.” [1] https://www.hausfeld.com/media/550bhzyp/realpage-complaint-filed.pdf https://www.hausfeld.com/media/550bhzyp/realpage-complaint-f...
Ekaros 4y ago
I might accept information sharing of rents and price levels. And someone guessing what market will bear. But having someone approve pricing? That is clearly something worth prosecuting and heavily fining for.
hk1337 4y ago
Geez. I thought it was borderline when I thought they were just providing pricing stats but to put even the smallest of barriers that prevents the user from setting a price outside of their recommendation is ludicrous. RealPage basically just put themselves in the position of running the market.

peoplearepeople 4y ago

> await approval Sure seems like RealPage is price fixing then

vel0city 4y ago
The approval wouldn't be from RealPage, it would be from that employee's supervisor. Essentially, one can configure RealPage (and RealPage seems to make this suggestion) to use their auto-price tool by default and require management approvals if employees want to set the price to something else. If I'm buying a Playstation at Walmart, chances are the person at the checkout counter can't change the price directly and give me a discount. They probably can call over a manager who could approve a price change because they can see I'm a really cool person who should get $50 off this Playstation.
- solarmist 4y ago
  No, the article is very clear. There is approvals team that that has to press the button in addition to management. To slow down/increase friction the process even more.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > There is approvals team that that has to press the button in addition to management. I agree the article is very clear. The approvals team is the management of the property. From the article: > If there is a disagreement between the participating Lessor and the RealPage Pricing Advisor, the dispute is often elevated to the Lessor’s management for resolution, and specific reasons justifying a departure from RealPage’s pricing level are usually required. This snippet is in the "..." from the above comment. Funny they snipped out this extremely critical part of the quote to show who does the approval. Where does it say RealPage employees need to approve the price?
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Both the article and the court filing are unclear about who "the Lessor's management" is, but the Lessor is quite clearly defined as the party which is making property available for lease It's difficult to imagine a reason why a property owner should have to appeal to "management" to vary the prices of their own asset that doesn't involve "management" being an cartel body.
      - vel0city 4y ago
        Yeah, its unclear because the Lessor's management could be a property management company, the ownership of the property, a leasing team supervisor, etc. There's a lot of ways you can set up your property ownership/management/leasing teams, so there wouldn't be a single point to say "the lessor's manager". However, that management is not RealPage.
        notahacker 4y ago
        But, according to the filing, there is a person called a "RealPage Pricing Advisor" who is typically the only party in the loop with the ability to settle the disagreement without seeking further approvals. And it's not exactly a normal arrangement for the "Lessor's employees with pricing responsibility" to have prices dictated to them by a third party company which also sets the Lessor's competitors' prices. Similarly, if that store manager at Walmart you mentioned had to seek approval from the same advisor that does prices for K-mart and Target to adjust the amount on the till, I don't think one could argue that this wasn't price fixing so long as he was still able to get you the discount by petitioning the Walton Family...
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  First, how do you not have a 'you're posting too fast' cooldown with all the posts you are making on this thread? Second, this isn't playstation though is it? But staying with this example, if I go get a $50 meal my server very much can adjust my bill 'I removed X', 'I comped Y' happens all the time. If I go to a matress store/furniture store the sales person very much has the ability to lower my price arbitrarily on items way more expensive than a Playstation. Your 1 example isn't really all that relevant.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    What, you didn't buy HN Premium+ for the 10x posting rate? J/K, I believe it has something to do with karma level. You still have a pretty low karma amount. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > First, how do you not have a 'you're posting too fast' cooldown with all the posts you are making on this thread? I dunno, I definitely have some posts where I have to wait for the reply link to show up to write a reply. > if I go get a $50 meal my server very much can adjust my bill 'I removed X', 'I comped Y' happens all the time. And usually behind the scenes they got a supervisor or manager approval for doing such a thing, or will probably have to explain the deviance from normal pricing later. > If I go to a matress store/furniture store the sales person very much has the ability to lower my price arbitrarily on items way more expensive than a Playstation. Most times that I've negotiated pricing for things (cars, mattresses, etc.) outside of private party the final price was subject to some kind of supervisor/manager approval. I can't think of a single time where the final sale for some negotiated price didn't have some approval process to it. If a business just allows their front of line employees to arbitrarily set prices without any kind of review, their business probably isn't going to do too well. The front of line sales people probably don't have all the information as to why the company is wanting to set the prices a certain way, and without that information they're setting prices rather arbitrarily. This could lead to some pretty massive damages to the company. If a waiter just decides to start only charging $1 for the $5 burgers, the business is going to have a problem.

kortilla 4y ago

>It's hard to imagine a clearer, more blatant description of cartel price fixing. Uh, OPEC?

lordnacho 4y ago
C isn't for cartel
- IncRnd 4y ago
  OPEC is literally a cartel. The spelling is meaningless, and nobody even said that C stands for cartel. cartel [1] noun a group of similar independent companies who join together to control prices and limit competition: * an oil cartel [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/cartel https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/carte...
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    I don't deny they are a cartel, it just looked like GP thought that it was somehow clear from the name.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
While OPEC is a cartel, it does not fix prices. It reduces or increases supply, and then the market decides price organically based on laws of supply & demand. So not quite the same.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  ...with the intention of fixing prices.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  That's like saying the sky isn't really blue, when someone asks you the color. "As far as wavelengths go, Earth's sky really is a bluish violet. But because of our eyes we see it as pale blue." [1] Saying OPEC doesn't fix prices is a nonsense statement that does nothing but split hairs. OPEC engages in price fixing as set forth by the FTC, though they are not subject to the FTC. [2] Price fixing is a term of art that doesn't just mean the specific price of a sale is fixed. Price fixing can also mean that prices are indirectly fixed by production quotas or capacity. OPEC exists for the very reason to set production quotas or capacity. "OPEC's objective is to co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries" [3] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/01/11/earths-skies-are-violet-we-just-see-them-as-blue/?sh=4dd44f99735f https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/01/11/earth... [2] https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-competitors/price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... [3] https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/24.htm https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/24.htm

ordinaryradical 4y ago

This is the smoking gun, imo. It doesn’t matter if it’s accomplished via software, AI, or anything else—a blatant attempt to coordinate and coerce landlords into a given pricing regime is the definition of price fixing. I suspect there’s a lot of other price coordination schemes going on under the surface of our society just like this. The pandemic gave them cover, but the coordinated effort to raise prices destroys the efficient market hypothesis as does the gargantuan nature (and influence) of single actors within industries. There is no future for capitalism without harsh enforcement and trust-busting on this front.

dheera 4y ago
> destroys the efficient market hypothesis > There is no future for capitalism My honest opinion -- We don't need an efficient market. We don't need extreme capitalism. We need housing for everyone. We need government to step in and cap housing prices, build more housing, and drive away the 80-year-old farts with 15 houses still trying to extract money from poor college students. Housing should be built to LIVE in, not as an investment.
- runnerup 4y ago
  I’d be fine with them just building more housing and taxing either land value or empty units.
  - dheera 4y ago
    Taxing empty units -- yes, 100% Taxing land value -- this unfortunately leads to them passing on the taxes to renters, and rental housing becomes ever more unaffordable
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      the advantage of taxing land value is that you can pass on less tax for higher density which means higher density housing gets higher returns for landlords incentivizing construction.

pilarphosol 4y ago

[dead]

jollyllama 4y ago

I think landlords have already been doing this even before software existed. There is an additional mechanism that creates this dynamic, where properties (especially commercial ones) are valued based on the price of leases. For this reason, it can be better for landlords to let a property stay empty with a higher listed rent than to let it open up, if they are renewing their lease or borrowing against it.

ramraj07 4y ago
Doesn’t matter, now they are openly colluding through a company. A competent government can create a RICO equivalent and penalize these animals, if it wanted to.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Government officials whose campaigns are funded by the potential members of the RICO suit are rarely ones to push for said suit.
jonathankoren 4y ago
There’s two different types of price collusion, and only one is illegal. The first is using public signals (ie looking at competitors prices) and setting yours to match. This is perfectly acceptable, and is usually unspokenly enforced by tit-for-tat strategies. The second is when you get together and say, “1bd studios are $1200, agreed?” This explicit coordination is illegal. IANAL, but this looks closer to the second.
- DaveExeter 4y ago
  >This is perfectly acceptable Not "perfectly". I think some companies have gotten into trouble doing this.
cjbgkagh 4y ago
I’ve heard from non-authorities sources that loans for the comercial properties have covenants that would severely financially punish the landlord for lowering the rent. Enough of these restrictions in a single location would have a monopolistic effect on pricing paid for by landlords who now have to carry these loans without tenants. Usually it’s expensive to distort a market enough to maintain monopoly pricing but not if you can get someone else that is optimistic, naive, or desperate to pay for it.

bitwize 4y ago

> This is like calling your pyramid scheme "Pyramidal Inc.". (in Coach Z voice) "That happened one time!" TransAmerica owns an insurance MLM called World Financial Group. I was unfortunate enough to be approached by one of their salespeople at a meetup, and the number on the business card he gave me was, I shit you not, 1-800-PYRAMID. A reference to the TransAmerica Pyramid Building in San Francisco, but still.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

Gotta love how capital gets all high and mighty about unions, while getting repeatedly caught with various forms of collusion, such as the Big Tech salary collusion a decade ago or cartoon-villain-bad levels of price fixing as we see here. Basically, it boils down to, "do as I say, not as I do." Is it possible for the suit to result in charges brought against all users of RealPage? They are active participants, after all.

d0gsg0w00f 4y ago
Well, cartels aren't capitalism. Capitalism would be someone coming in and realizing the prices are inflated and undercut the rent prices while still being profitable.
- wwweston 4y ago
  "Capitalism" can be a lot of things, including things which privilege capital without regard to market freedom for labor or consumer. Cartels certainly aren't free markets. To keep those you need policy which keeps them that way.
  - SMAAART 4y ago
    George Orwell, of 1984 fame, would approve of this comment.
    - wwweston 4y ago
      Hard to say for sure, but probably correct: Orwell seemed to be a critic of totalist ideologies, certainly totalitarian communism but he also had words for unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism.
      - SMAAART 4y ago
        My comment was not political in nature, I was referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak

idopmstuff 4y ago

I was all ready to come into the comments with "Sure this is annoying, but it's a symptom of the underlying problem of a lack of housing caused by poor housing policy." Then I got to this paragraph, and yeah, no, this just clearly price fixing. You have to convince your software provider to let you charge a price that's different than what they want you to charge? That is truly bananas.

andrewstuart2 4y ago
That's because you're not so much convincing the software provider as you are the cartel who wants prices to rise as effectively as possible.
Aunche 4y ago
If you take the plaintiff's allegations at face value, of course the defendant is going to sound guilty. The reason why I'm skeptical is because "cartel as a service" doesn't make any sense as a business model. Realpage doesn't gain anything from creating a cartel because they don't own the homes. They advertise that they maximize profits for landlords. If they are indeed price fixing, they aren't fulfilling their promise to their customers. Edit: As with all just about anything. It looks like, people are hostile of the idea of "presumption of innocence" when that requires them to question their priors.
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  > If they are indeed price fixing, they aren't fulfilling their promise to their customers. They definitely are! Price fixing ensures higher rent for the whole cartel (which is comprised of their customers). And enforcing cooperation is decidedly a good thing, because cooperation is required to keep prices artificially inflated. What Realpage gains from creating a cartel is a really sticky customer base. I don't think it makes sense as a model because it seems to be clearly illegal, but putting that aside they're delivering a lot of value to their customers and are getting paid for it - it's definitely a sensible business model.
  - Aunche 4y ago

exabrial 4y ago

Holy hell. Can we please sue these fuckers into oblivion and every apartment complex that participated?

jfghi 4y ago

More modern I think would be PRMD Solutions

munificent 4y ago
prmd.eth

arrosenberg 4y ago

Honestly. The CEO and General Counsel? Straight to jail for economic crimes. They're stealing from the regular people.

yterdy 4y ago

Here's a doc that was recently scrubbed from the marketing page of the company, Entrata, that provides software to my property manager (thank you, Archive.org). https://imgur.com/a/D3gsLBL https://imgur.com/a/D3gsLBL If there's any integrity left in our legal system, this will be a slam dunk for renters.

paulgb 4y ago

I thought maybe the article was cutting out context from the source, so I read the source[1], and not only was the article not taking it out of context, there are even more damning quotes: > As one Lessor explains, while “we are all technically competitors,” RealPage “helps us work together,” “to work with a community in pricing strategies, not to work separately.” [1] https://www.hausfeld.com/media/550bhzyp/realpage-complaint-filed.pdf https://www.hausfeld.com/media/550bhzyp/realpage-complaint-f...

Ekaros 4y ago

I might accept information sharing of rents and price levels. And someone guessing what market will bear. But having someone approve pricing? That is clearly something worth prosecuting and heavily fining for.

hk1337 4y ago

Geez. I thought it was borderline when I thought they were just providing pricing stats but to put even the smallest of barriers that prevents the user from setting a price outside of their recommendation is ludicrous. RealPage basically just put themselves in the position of running the market.