They might not share info but they will regenerate identical suggestions from market data for ask customers effectively price fixing without clear collusion
Is that "price collusion" though? How's that different than if you're selling stuff on cragislist/facebook marketplace/ebay, and you set your price by looking what other listings are?
I think it's a positive step for American housing market to slowly check off the list of pointless non-solutions so that we can finally arrive at the conclusion that the only way out of the crisis is to build housing. We're just following the San Francisco process here. Ban realpage. Tax vacancies. Complain about foreign investors. Put a tax on "mansions" that's actually a tax on apartment buildings. We will slowly, slowly check off all the boxes of the pointless things. Then 50 years later we can start building houses.
The housing problem is a lot like the medical problem but with a 30-50yr head start to the regulatory capture.
You've got what was at one point a broadly accessible necessity, various degrees of government subsidy and market intervention, a bunch of ancillary industries trying to get their place on the coattails enshrined in law, etc, etc. Then that feedback loop was let to run for a couple generations and you get the current shit.
And it can't easily or promptly be cut back because it's such a huge fraction of commerce (slavery was 12% gdp in its day for comparison) that so many people would take a haircut that you'd start a war if you tried to do anything decisive. But on some level you have to, because to quote Tucker Carlson. "there's more to a national economy than real-estate and high finance" (specifically selected to be inflammatory, not like he's anywhere near the only one saying this).
I think this is good, but I doubt it'll actually impact rental prices as much as people think, because the problem is fundamentally a housing shortage.
The problem is fundamentally a housing shortage AND RealPage recommended to large rental operators that they leave apartments empty. So they definitely did actually pour gasoline on the fire.
Landlords are completely capable of leaving units vacant all by themselves and there isn't any evidence that realpage clients were more likely to do that.
> For tenants, the system upends the practice of negotiating with apartment building staff. RealPage discourages bargaining with renters and has even recommended that landlords in some cases accept a lower occupancy rate in order to raise rents and make more money.
...
> Apartment managers can reject the software’s suggestions, but as many as 90% are adopted, according to former RealPage employees.
Yeah I mean I don't know how to tell you this but that's not a source. Rental managers leave units vacant all the time, hoping for an unrealistic price. It's certainly possible and even consistent with those claims that realpage clients were no worse than general property managers in this regard. They may have even been more willing to accept lower prices based on the realpage recommendations.
They might not share info but they will regenerate identical suggestions from market data for ask customers effectively price fixing without clear collusion
Is that "price collusion" though? How's that different than if you're selling stuff on cragislist/facebook marketplace/ebay, and you set your price by looking what other listings are?
There seems to be nothing preventing YieldStar's actual business model:
1. Pick a rental rate. This can be based on public data, nonpublic data, or totally made-up.
2. "Strongly encourage" your users/customers to use the rate you picked.
3. 90% of your users/customers agree (historically speaking), legal collusion achieved.
>2. "Strongly encourage" your users/customers to use the rate you picked.
That's what got them whacked in the DOJ investigation/indictment though?
That's the rent controls that communists were supposed to bring, right? It just needs a cuty hall setting a celling on yearly increases
I think it's a positive step for American housing market to slowly check off the list of pointless non-solutions so that we can finally arrive at the conclusion that the only way out of the crisis is to build housing. We're just following the San Francisco process here. Ban realpage. Tax vacancies. Complain about foreign investors. Put a tax on "mansions" that's actually a tax on apartment buildings. We will slowly, slowly check off all the boxes of the pointless things. Then 50 years later we can start building houses.
The housing problem is a lot like the medical problem but with a 30-50yr head start to the regulatory capture.
You've got what was at one point a broadly accessible necessity, various degrees of government subsidy and market intervention, a bunch of ancillary industries trying to get their place on the coattails enshrined in law, etc, etc. Then that feedback loop was let to run for a couple generations and you get the current shit.
And it can't easily or promptly be cut back because it's such a huge fraction of commerce (slavery was 12% gdp in its day for comparison) that so many people would take a haircut that you'd start a war if you tried to do anything decisive. But on some level you have to, because to quote Tucker Carlson. "there's more to a national economy than real-estate and high finance" (specifically selected to be inflammatory, not like he's anywhere near the only one saying this).
You skipped “ban Airbnbs” as NYC did (to no effect other than making it more difficult for people who live there to have friends come visit them).
Right, the list of counterproductive things we already tried is too long to write down in this little box. Thanks for the reminder, though.
I think this is good, but I doubt it'll actually impact rental prices as much as people think, because the problem is fundamentally a housing shortage.
The problem is fundamentally a housing shortage AND RealPage recommended to large rental operators that they leave apartments empty. So they definitely did actually pour gasoline on the fire.
Landlords are completely capable of leaving units vacant all by themselves and there isn't any evidence that realpage clients were more likely to do that.
My source was this article which broke the RealPage story three years ago:
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
> For tenants, the system upends the practice of negotiating with apartment building staff. RealPage discourages bargaining with renters and has even recommended that landlords in some cases accept a lower occupancy rate in order to raise rents and make more money.
...
> Apartment managers can reject the software’s suggestions, but as many as 90% are adopted, according to former RealPage employees.
Yeah I mean I don't know how to tell you this but that's not a source. Rental managers leave units vacant all the time, hoping for an unrealistic price. It's certainly possible and even consistent with those claims that realpage clients were no worse than general property managers in this regard. They may have even been more willing to accept lower prices based on the realpage recommendations.