Elections Have Consequences

The Department of Justice, and 8 states, have sued the RealPage platform, arguing that its whole business model is supporting illegal pricing collusion.

First, RealPage's model has clearly been to function as an intermediary to foment collusion, and second, I am a bit surprised that the DoJ decided to sue over this:

The United States today sued RealPage, alleging that the software maker distorts competition in rental housing by helping landlords collectively set prices.

"To ensure they secure the greatest value for their needs, renters rely on robust and fierce competition between landlords. RealPage distorts that competition," said the lawsuit filed by the US government and eight state attorneys general. In a press release, the Justice Department said that "RealPage's pricing algorithm violates antitrust laws."

Attorney General Merrick Garland delivered remarks on the lawsuit. "When the Sherman Act was passed, an anticompetitive scheme might have looked like robber barons shaking hands at a secret meeting," he said. "Today, it looks like landlords using mathematical algorithms to align their rents. But antitrust law does not become obsolete simply because competitors find new ways to unlawfully act in concert."

RealPage's commercial revenue management software "enable[s] landlords to sidestep vigorous competition to win renters' business," the lawsuit alleged. "Landlords, who would otherwise be competing with each other, submit on a daily basis their competitively sensitive information to RealPage. This nonpublic, material, and granular rental data includes, among other information, a landlord's rental prices from executed leases, lease terms, and future occupancy. RealPage collects a broad swath of such data from competing landlords, combines it, and feeds it to an algorithm."

It's more than this/.  RealPage also strong-arms its clients to follow its recommendations:

………

RealPage recently argued that its software "benefits both housing providers and residents," and "makes price recommendations in all directions—up, down, or no change—to align with property-specific objectives of the housing providers using the software." Landlords don't have to follow the recommendations, the company says.

The US said RealPage takes a more direct role in setting prices. RealPage "reviews and weighs in on landlords' other policies, including trying to—and often succeeding in—ending renter-friendly concessions (like a free month's rent or waived fees) to attract or retain renters," the lawsuit said. Garland alleged that "a large number of landlords effectively agree to outsource their pricing decisions to RealPage by using an 'auto accept' setting, which effectively permits RealPage to determine the price a renter will pay."

When one looks at tech in the US today, it seems that most of it is stalking, (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.), pursuit of monopoly rents (RealPage, Uber, Lyft, Alibaba, WeWork, etc), or outright fraud (Cryptocurrency, LLM Artificial Intelligence, etc).

If the DoJ would actually prosecute this sort of sh%$ criminally, it would make the world a better place, particularly San Francisco, which can survive earthquakes, but not, it seems, tech bros.