[apendleton]

Yes, the companies targeted here aren't property managers themselves, they sell software to property managers, and have ended up providing services to many ostensibly-competing managers and building owners in some metro areas, who collectively control enough of the rental market in those areas that they can "maximize rent" by moving the whole market up in concert rather than having any of the owners actually compete with one another.

From a ProPublica piece [1] about it, for example:

> In one neighborhood in Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of apartments were overseen by just 10 property managers, every single one of which used pricing software sold by RealPage.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

[Rapzid]

Ahh, this is the missing context!

The collusion is the agreement to adhere to the pricing set by a central pricing authority, not basing your prices off shared information or recommendations. This makes a lot of sense now.

Edit: Well maybe it wasn't missing, but I missed it in any case. Cheers.

[lazide]

But why wouldn’t they just got a couple percent under the price, and fill all their units?

Vacancies kill returns.