RealPage Agrees To Settle Federal Rent-Collusion Case (nytimes.com) 19
The Justice Department has reached an agreement to settle an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a real estate software company that the government accused of enabling landlords to collude to raise rents. From a report: Using RealPage software, landlords shared information about their rents and occupancy rates with the company, after which an algorithm suggested what to charge renters. The government's suit, which was joined by several state attorneys general, accused RealPage of taking the confidential information and suggesting rents higher than those in a free market.
Under the settlement proposal, which requires approval by a federal judge overseeing the case in the Middle District of North Carolina, RealPage's software could no longer use information about current leases to train its algorithm. Nonpublic data from competing landlords would also be excluded when suggesting rents. "Competing companies must make independent pricing decisions, and with the rise of algorithmic and artificial intelligence tools, we will remain at the forefront of vigorous antitrust enforcement," said Gail Slater, who leads the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, in a news release.
Under the settlement proposal, which requires approval by a federal judge overseeing the case in the Middle District of North Carolina, RealPage's software could no longer use information about current leases to train its algorithm. Nonpublic data from competing landlords would also be excluded when suggesting rents. "Competing companies must make independent pricing decisions, and with the rise of algorithmic and artificial intelligence tools, we will remain at the forefront of vigorous antitrust enforcement," said Gail Slater, who leads the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, in a news release.
Did they prevent access to enough information? (Score:2)
I'm reminded of what the Benetton F1 team did when rules specifically prevented teams from using wheel speed and gear information to run traction control systems. Instead they used a combination of incoming air stream pressure (similar to how an aircraft's pitot-static system works) in combination with some preloaded per-event data and track position information to make another traction control system that did the same job.
Information about past leases and public data from competing landlords might still be
As soon as attorney general's started sniffing (Score:3, Informative)
It's painfully obvious this is cost consumers hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. The frustrating thing is as usual it's a settlement where they don't have to give up any of the ill-gotten gains. All any of these crooks ever have to do is hold out until there is a republican in the White House and then run it up to a federal court. It worked for Microsoft.
Seriously go read up on their antitrust lawsuit. They just dragged it in court until Bush Jr got in charge and he gave them a sweetheart deal that included a significant expansion of their presence in public schools.
I'm American (Score:3)
I wasn't fully recovered financially until around 2016 which is when my kid hit College and suddenly I had the pay for them to go through college. Not being a psychopath or a piece of shit I stepped up and actually paid for them to get through college. Because if you're going to have a fucking kid you should make damn sure they can actually support themselves in this fucked up world an
Re: (Score:3)
Trump is likely going to get a third term
It's amazing how many people are stupid enough to actually believe this shit. Again,I am disappointed by the supposedly superior intellect.
Donald Trump should be in prison for Jan 6th (Score:2)
And all it took for him to get another term with a shitload of propaganda, the news media being owned by billionaires and the Democrats running a man far too old to be running and a woman.
There was also a metric fuck ton of voters suppression. Literally millions of
Re: (Score:2)
That's 3 years away. His health is getting worse and his administration is tightening its grip too strongly too quickly. A lot of the Epstein files might come out within a couple months. His administration might fall apart before he has the chance to run again. DEI hiring for loyalty above all else doesn't result in competent leaders nor administrators.
If the GOP does survive through the midterms, then you can start worrying about what comes next. At that time, all the sane Republicans will likely have
Re: Donald Trump should be in prison for Jan 6th (Score:1)
https://polymarket.com/event/w... [polymarket.com]
Re: (Score:1)
I enjoyed this post and goddman man i've been saying stuff like this for like a decade now and I fucking hope it finally happens.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah there's no reason to give trump a 3rd term when he's dying. He already wrote the playbook, they can run it with any compliant psycho now.
weak. (Score:5, Insightful)
So no actual punishment at all, just a promise to stop doing the most obviously illegal part?
The company deserves to be liquidated and the all funds distributed to the renters they ripped off.
Re: (Score:3)
And no repayment to all the renters who have been gouged for years due to this price fixing, either.
Re: weak. (Score:2)
And it's not like those rents are going to go back down
Re:weak. (Score:4, Insightful)
So no actual punishment at all, just a promise to stop doing the most obviously illegal part?
The company deserves to be liquidated and the all funds distributed to the renters they ripped off.
It's just a promise that is guaranteed to be violated. Why? Because the only reason for RealPage's existence is to help landlords set rents. If non-public rent info cannot be used to set rents, RealPage has zero value and they would quickly go bankrupt. The mere continuance of their existence strongly suggests that they are violating their promise.
Which DOJ is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"we will remain at the forefront of vigorous antitrust enforcement," said Gail Slater
I don't recognize this DOJ. Is this from 2023?
Looks to me like RealPage is one of the few grift engines that didn't bribe Trump in time to have the DOJ forget about it.
Where's my refund? (Score:2)
So clearly we renters should be getting a nickle or something, right?
So many loopholes (Score:2)
Nonpublic data from competing landlords would also be excluded when suggesting rents
This is kind of like how hospitals are now required to make their prices "public." So they make a web page listing all the prices, but don't make it indexable by Google. They're technically complying with the law, but because Google can't find it, neither can potential patients.
In the rent case, landlords can simply create "public" pages (not indexable by Google) listing their rents. Since they are now "public" the algorithm can use the prices, even if regular people can't find the pages.
Re: (Score:2)
This gave me the idea to make something like a Shodan search engine for US healthcare but it looks like it's already been done:
https://www.hospitalpricingfil... [hospitalpricingfiles.org]
What makes this worse (Score:2)
is not only not giving up some of those ill-gotten gains, by at least, say, LOWERING THE RENT, but remember 40% or so of the rental market is now owned, directly or indirectly, by VC. There's no way they will stop colluding.