[ajhurliman]

This blows my mind that they're actually pursuing this, the two complaints are that they schemed to decrease competition among landlords and that they monopolized commercial revenue management software. Both are completely bogus.

You could say the entire profession of appraising real estate prices "decreases competition" if the first complaint is valid.

And they certainly haven't monopolized the software space, I'd never even heard of RealPage until the lawsuit, I used Rentometer. There are dozens more, predicting rent prices is hardly a novel idea.

I think that was like one of the toy problems in Andrew Ng's online ML course.

[infecto]

It’s amazing your confidence when it sounds like you don’t even participate in the top N landlord space for a given market.

IIRC it has already been demonstrated that RealPage had the lion shares of the total units in certain markets.

The question is not about rent predictions but having asymmetric information that allows users of the site to effectively participate as a cartel. I am a big proponent of free markets but I think this is a worthy question to answer. When your algorithm controls more than 50% of pricing in a market does that count as collusion and how do you handle it. It seems like it might effectively eliminate the market price as you the dominant player are setting it.

It might get thrown out but I believe it’s naive and brash to just dismiss it so easily.

[trinsic2]

I'm glad these questions are being raised and bringing more awareness. I always suspected there was something that was going on to artificially raise rent prices. It sounds like collusion to me.

[mistrial9]

dismissive and slightly insulting replies to concerns about price are daily business

[toomuchtodo]

"Price fixing by algorithm is still price fixing," regardless of fanciness or cleverness.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fix...

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/YardiSOI-filed%...

[game_the0ry]

I wouldn't be happy either if I was a landlord.

But the landlord-ing business is a tough business, and business is about to get tougher.

[kerkeslager]

If you think being in the landlord is tough, try getting a job.

I mean seriously, being a landlord is just owning something. At best, you do the work of a handyman, and get paid orders of magnitude more for that work. And if you're the average landlord, a handyman does a lot more work and does a better job because they actually have to compete. Being a landlord isn't hard, it's absurdly easy compared to the income it yields.

[consteval]

I think being a landlord is pretty much the easiest business ever. As compared to real businesses, who really produce products and really participate in competitive markets.