Justice Department Sues RealPage, Alleging It Enabled Price-Fixing On Rents (cbsnews.com) 39
The Justice Department on Friday filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a property management software provider, alleging it enabled a collusion among landlords to inflate rents for millions of Americans. From a report: The complaint claims the Richardson, Texas-based company and its competitors engaged in a price-fixing scheme by sharing nonpublic, sensitive information, which RealPage's algorithmic pricing software used to generate pricing recommendations. The company replaced competition with rent coordination to the detriment of renters across the U.S., according to the suit, monopolizing the market through its revenue management software which was used by landlords to maximize rent costs.
The DOJ is joined by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. The complaint alleges that RealPage violated sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, an antitrust law. "Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law," Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement Friday.
"We allege that RealPage's pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents. Using software as the sharing mechanism does not immunize this scheme from Sherman Act liability, and the Justice Department will continue to aggressively enforce the antitrust laws and protect the American people from those who violate them." Further reading:
Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixing on Rental Housing?;
Are We Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia?;
Accused of Using Algorithms To Fix Rental Prices, RealPage Goes on Offensive;
Rent Going Up? One Company's Algorithm Could Be Why.
The DOJ is joined by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. The complaint alleges that RealPage violated sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, an antitrust law. "Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law," Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement Friday.
"We allege that RealPage's pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents. Using software as the sharing mechanism does not immunize this scheme from Sherman Act liability, and the Justice Department will continue to aggressively enforce the antitrust laws and protect the American people from those who violate them." Further reading:
Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixing on Rental Housing?;
Are We Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia?;
Accused of Using Algorithms To Fix Rental Prices, RealPage Goes on Offensive;
Rent Going Up? One Company's Algorithm Could Be Why.
sharing nonpublic information (Score:5, Insightful)
Using software to decide how much rent to charge, is not inherently illegal. But if the software that multiple different landlords are using shares non-public information between landlords, suddenly that's different, and they're open to charges of collusion and price-fixing.
You're allowed to use public information. Like, if your competitor runs public advertisements, or posts public signs, that list certain prices, you're absolutely allowed to take that into account when deciding your own prices. (There isn't a gas station in North America that doesn't do this; many other businesses do it as well.)
But sharing non-public information crosses a line.
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> But sharing non-public information crosses a line.
But are the prices charged still "non-public" if they've been voluntarily shared with what... let's be real here... is really nothing more than a *data broker, just one focused on a single industry? One would presume that the rates are aggregate values run through an anonymization service to strip them of PII. So laws like the CCPA would not apply. So are there other laws that dictate confidentiality in rental contracts? Because lacking those, or no
Re:sharing nonpublic information (Score:5, Insightful)
Using a middle man to run your collusion does not magically make it not collusion. Also, they aren't merely providing publicly available rental rates. We know this because one defendant was released from the suit because they explicitly opted out of using the private data when using the RealPage software.
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there is no legal liability for "collude", the word you're looking for is to "conspire"
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/collusion
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Tacit collusion, sometimes called oligopolistic price coordination or conscious parallelism, is the process **(not in itself unlawful)** by which firms in a concentrated market create, in effect, monopoly power by setting their prices at a profit-maximizing, supra-competitive level after recognizing their shared economic interests and interdependence with respect to price and ou
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A distinction without a difference as regards anti-trust law and the use of private information in anti-competitive practices given the definition of the word collusion.
Re:sharing nonpublic information (Score:4, Informative)
>But are the prices charged still "non-public" if they've been
>voluntarily shared with what... let's be real here... is really nothing
>more than a *data broker, just one focused on a single industry?
when that "broker" is really only brokering to competitors, very much "yes"!
Now, if this broker is actually also selling to, for example, a renters' association, it might be public.
The situations where markets work well are, generally, those with symmetric information. (although they work surpisingly well with less than full information).
But here, it would appear (pending more information) that the information is only being shared between the landlords, using the "broker" as their enforcement mechanism. (without such a mechanism, price fixing cartels fail quickly, as there is a rush to be the first to cheat)
hawk, displaced economics professor
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(without such a mechanism, price fixing cartels fail quickly, as there is a rush to be the first to cheat)
Exactly right. The key to free market capital markets is it harnesses human nature's greed. It wisely accepts self centered needs rather than trying to cure people of motivating self interest. The incentives exerted on markets need a level playing field. The best product, most value, hardest workers, and happiest customers can find one another in spite of everyone's overwhelming appetites, if we are fair. Its very important we eliminate the cheaters and inside traders and other gimmicks that discourage p
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Public information is things like the American equivalent of RightMove, or walking round looking at prices in your competitors' windows or the local news paper. That's how they colated market data in the past.
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>That part about "sharing nonpublic, sensitive information" is the key bit.
No, its really not. Its literally just a market analysis of bids / asks, just like the stock market, and the "non public information" is the same as the after hours trading on the stock market.
For there to be any "collusion", there has to be a "meeting of the minds" and "agreement to be bound" between the participants in the market, to "restrain trade". In this instance there in fact is no collusion, any more than there is collusi
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Number of empty units and average time to fill a unit are not the equivalent of 'after hours trades', yet both are examples of private information that RealPage makes use of.
They will settle for 1% of their ill-gotten gains (Score:4, Insightful)
So this is one prong in the attack (Score:5, Interesting)
I get it as someone stuck in apartments because by the time my kid was out of college and didn't need vast sums of money to stay afloat while studying I would love to see faster action on housing prices in general.
But it's tough to do that when voters keep putting ProCorporate assholes in charge. How old is a 50/50 chance we're not going to be a democracy next year.
For now this has at least stopped the bleeding. My rent for the first time in 10 years didn't go up. So you can tell that they're on notice.
In the meantime there are plans to prevent corporations from buying single-family homes, to provide incentives for building more single-family homes and to do large infrastructure projects like we did in the '70s and '80s that result in creating enough stock to keep ahead of Wall Streets attempts to buy up everything and rent it back to us.
All of this depends on the outcome of the election. If the current administration wins then we will continue to see these trends.
I know a lot of people here want their property values to go up indefinitely but remember if you're living in your house it doesn't do any good if you can sell it for a million dollars because you still have to live somewhere.
And if you have rental property did you think is just going to keep going up in value sooner or later a mega corporation will find a way to pry it from your hands. Probably using our health care system. You'll have some medical problem and you'll be between jobs after they crash to the economy and laid you off and you'll sell it for pennies on the dollar to get the money you need to live.
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> I know a lot of people here want their property values to go up indefinitely but remember if you're living in your house it doesn't do any good if you can sell it for a million dollars because you still have to live somewhere.
And oh god, my property taxes are killing me now..
Are you in Texas? (Score:2)
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>One of the complaints folks have about progressives is that they often aren't extreme enough and they don't solve the problems in the world in one fell swoop.
lol, maybe only in the circles that you are in, because it is those who want to deny reality. They think that daddy government is going to solve all of their problems, and have lost the inner locus of control that they might otherwise have to solve their own problem, paradoxically because of the same bureaucratic government they love so much.
RealPage isn't worried (Score:5, Insightful)
Supremes aren't what you think (Score:3, Interesting)
They know our current Supreme Court will not only exonerate them, but will also use this case to eviscerate the Justice Department's capacity to bringing antitrust lawsuits.
A government agency making up laws that the legislature didn't write, is not the same as the justice department enforcing a law as written by taking a company to court.
Try to get more precision in your political positions. Just because the supreme court made a decision you don't like does *not* mean that they will come down willy-nilly on every subsequent decision in an arbitrary manner. In fact, the supreme court always has good reasoning behind their decisions, and also in fact these reasons are available
Re:Supremes aren't what you think (Score:4, Insightful)
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the scotus just wants to keep getting its gratuity,
the system is fucked.
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I'd mod parent up if I had points today. But having read a bunch of recent SCOTUS decision, I don't quite agree that they are ALL 'highly informative'. The Trump Immunity case, in particular, I thought was both lacking in credible rationale AND lacking in guidance/rules for how lower courts should implement its directions. Most of the time, I've said to myself, "OK I may not agree with this, but I can see the reasoning behind the decision."
Will Amy Coney Barrett turn into the next Stephen Breyer? She se
The Democrats will pack the supreme Court (Score:1, Offtopic)
What's weird is the number of people here who think Donald Trump is on their side. I get the people who own rental property and don't understand that sooner or later a mega corporation will find a way to steal it from them... But there's
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I will sell my house for only a half million dollars to anyone who wants it. Today. Right now.
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>What's weird is the number of people here who think Donald Trump is on their side. I get the people who own rental property and don't understand that sooner or later a mega corporation will find a way to steal it from them... But there's tons of people here who aren't in that boat.
Take your meds
The people here who support Trump, largely realize that socialism is a utopian ideology that's divorced from reality, just as much as the book of Daniel prophesized that "the lions would will lay with the lambs".
This DOJ has all the wrong targets (Score:2, Interesting)
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Whether or not they worked with the DoJ means exactly bupkis. You call up an IRS agent and follow all his advice, if the IRS decides you owe taxes all that consultation means jack and shit.
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nws (Score:1)
They should sue the National Weather service, since it enables farmers to fix prices also.
Huh? (Score:2)
> used by landlords to maximize rent costs
Shouldn't that say "used by landlords to maximize rent revenue"? Who maximizes costs, ever, anywhere?
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Maximize costs to renters.
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Personally, I have no dog in this fight. I live in a city of ten thousand people, in the Midwest, and rent prices are relatively reasonable here, probably at least partly because the local housing market didn't recover from the 2008 CDO-bubble crash, until 2022 or so, which is still fairly recent; and consequently our home ownership
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Hi Jonadab! (we have interacted before on rec.games.int-fiction)
I accept that you and the other person who replied to me have identified the intent of the original author of the sentence, but I still don't think a landlord thinks "I need to maximize how much it costs to live in the apartments I rent." He might think "I need to maximize how much revenue I get from renting this aprtment", or he might think "Maintenance costs on the apartment went up last year, so I need to raise rents to compensate."
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Google Groups kicked Usenet to the curb last year. The archive can be searched but they are not updating it nor can you post from there.
rgif still exists in Usenet on the pay providers I've looked at but since they started the "forum" [intfiction.org] a few years ago it's been practically dead, as has raif.
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