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There's a huge difference between researching your competition and coordinating with them. In effect, Realpage is acting as a mechanism for landlords to coordin

by advael 2y ago

There's a huge difference between researching your competition and coordinating with them. In effect, Realpage is acting as a mechanism for landlords to coordinate prices collaboratively rather than competitively. It just hopes to get away with it by having them outsource the analysis part of this to a third party. It likely would have gotten caught sooner if it weren't for the nonsensical attitude regulators have taken toward software products, where using a computer to do something is treated as somehow different from simply doing it

gruez 2y ago
>There's a huge difference between researching your competition and coordinating with them If you read my comment carefully, you'd see that I was specifically talking about "independently derive the optimal price", not any sort of coordination.
- advael 2y ago
  If you read my comment at all, you'd notice it leads with drawing a distinction between your hypothetical scenario and the actual case at hand. If you read my comment carefully, you might also notice that I'm being extra charitable by not pointing out that your hypothetical relies on oversimplifying how pricing signals operate in the real world. Of course you can make the problem seem to go away if you demand a simplification that elides all the details relevant to the problem.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >If you read my comment at all, you'd notice it leads with drawing a distinction between your hypothetical scenario and the actual case at hand. And that distinction was specifically acknowledged in my original comment. "Realpage goes beyond this by pressuring landlords to accept their recommended price, and that's probably what got them in hot water" >If you read my comment carefully, you might also notice that I'm being extra charitable by not pointing out that your hypothetical relies on oversimplifying how pricing signals operate in the real world. Of course you can make the problem seem to go away if you demand a simplification that elides all the details relevant to the problem. How does "how pricing signals operate in the real world" prevent my model from working? All you need is some sort of market research firm to provide key statistics like vacancy rate, disposable income, and average rent, and every landlord can arrive at approximately the same same rent.
    - advael 2y ago
      Right, I think that's not the only distinction here. Yes, Realpage pushes its customers to accept its recommendations. But by centralizing where this research is done, it doesn't have to do that to be engaging in anticompetitive behavior, because it also aggregates data volunteered by other organizations you might be nominally competing with, and the more people are using this service, the less likely a competitor might have some information that's not publicly available (or even that is available but isn't part of some standard method of analysis) they might be using to compete on price. The centralization of this service across competing organizations unto itself is a form of price-fixing, regardless of whether the company also demands that you use its estimates

by advael 2y ago

gruez 2y ago

>There's a huge difference between researching your competition and coordinating with them If you read my comment carefully, you'd see that I was specifically talking about "independently derive the optimal price", not any sort of coordination.

advael 2y ago
If you read my comment at all, you'd notice it leads with drawing a distinction between your hypothetical scenario and the actual case at hand. If you read my comment carefully, you might also notice that I'm being extra charitable by not pointing out that your hypothetical relies on oversimplifying how pricing signals operate in the real world. Of course you can make the problem seem to go away if you demand a simplification that elides all the details relevant to the problem.
- gruez 2y ago
  >If you read my comment at all, you'd notice it leads with drawing a distinction between your hypothetical scenario and the actual case at hand. And that distinction was specifically acknowledged in my original comment. "Realpage goes beyond this by pressuring landlords to accept their recommended price, and that's probably what got them in hot water" >If you read my comment carefully, you might also notice that I'm being extra charitable by not pointing out that your hypothetical relies on oversimplifying how pricing signals operate in the real world. Of course you can make the problem seem to go away if you demand a simplification that elides all the details relevant to the problem. How does "how pricing signals operate in the real world" prevent my model from working? All you need is some sort of market research firm to provide key statistics like vacancy rate, disposable income, and average rent, and every landlord can arrive at approximately the same same rent.
  - advael 2y ago
    Right, I think that's not the only distinction here. Yes, Realpage pushes its customers to accept its recommendations. But by centralizing where this research is done, it doesn't have to do that to be engaging in anticompetitive behavior, because it also aggregates data volunteered by other organizations you might be nominally competing with, and the more people are using this service, the less likely a competitor might have some information that's not publicly available (or even that is available but isn't part of some standard method of analysis) they might be using to compete on price. The centralization of this service across competing organizations unto itself is a form of price-fixing, regardless of whether the company also demands that you use its estimates