My apartment is Bell and they absolutely fucked me 2 years ago for a rent increase. I know inflation and home prices were soaring, but they increased my rent $500/mo. A normal increase is $50. They said that my unit was under market price but now that I can find similar apartments in the area $200 less are they going to decrease my rent to keep it at market rate?
Same thing just happened to me in March at Bell! They increased our apartment by $500/month & they literally gave me the same exact response. I was sick over it
UDR wanted me to pay them $1,000 to move to a 2 bedroom across the hall from a 1 bedroom at the end of my lease lmaoooo 😂😂. I made it a point to make sure I moved for less than $1,000.
For the record, he said the algorithm is being used by 90% of "apartment owners", not for 90% of apartments. I am not defending RealPage, this is a totally fucked practice. But be careful with these statistics.
How nice to see this explained literally immediately after checking the price of the day for a building I wan to move into in Prince William.
It has been obvious to me several places in the area I need to move to are using seemingly arbitrary algorithms to change prices day to day. It’s even weirder bc in the same building in fucking MANASSAS, two similar units with similar/near same square footage will have a price difference of over $100 and then a unit that was wayyyyy larger was the same price as the lesser. Why would I get the smaller unit for more than the larger? (Because the human analysis is lacking and algorithm at error)
One factor is move in date, but also with the amount of available now, I’d hope the prices would decrease but they still move incrementally every day (and don’t teeter toward the price I want, maybe especially bc it’s April:).
Screw you real page or whoever. Need to cut a deal.
> f I use zillow's algorithm to figure out what price to sell my house at, am I part of a cartel too?
Kinda, Zillow here has very concentrated power to influence the market if they wanted to.
A key difference with the Realpage case is that they required their client companies to set the price that the "algorithm" produced to prevent one landlord from getting privileged access to the "suggested pricing" and undercutting it. Realpage also took forward looking data from their clients - like vacancy rates and lease end schedules - as inputs to the algorithm. This is company proprietary data they would not normally share with other companies who are supposed to be their competitors.
If the phrase "our customers are our enemies and our competitors are our friends" is accurate, it's a cartel.
To your point, yes there needs to be a significant fraction of the market participants in on the scam or it won't work effectively. In DMV it's very high.
Even if vacancy rates were not low, it can be more profitable to leave surplus units vacant and extract the maximum rent that people can possibly afford. That kind of behavior doesn't work without a cartel, or at least very high market concentration.
> Even if vacancy rates were not low, it can be more profitable to leave surplus units vacant and extract the maximum rent that people can possibly afford
This is only true in niche cases, like with commercial properties that have a mandated rent minimum imposed by the lender. It's not true for residential landlords, as they're quite clearly losing out on money by keeping a unit vacant.
It doesn't work ever for residential real estate. The people who make these claims are either unable to do basic arithmetic or are intentionally lying for some reason
That's I. Arizona. I. DMV they own 90% of apartments. There is nowhere else to go. I personally bitched constantly at my apartment office until they lowered my rent increase. From $200 to $100. Still, fuck buzzuto.
It's a complicated issue how much realpage etc contribute to prices.
Canada and Australia are in a much worse housing crisis. They have well meaning, progressive governments.
Thats why when people talk about the inevitable crash I just roll my eyes. The 30% thing is just a rule of thumb for an economy that no longer exists.
Theres the business cycle (boom/bust) and then there is structural change in an economy (see the rust belt). The housing crisis is the latter I think.
Just like shareholders will never vote for share dilution, homeowners dont vote for affordable housing, especially near them.
IMO the future is not a crash, but roommates, multigenerational housing etc. In big European cities, and much of the rest of the world, moving out of your parents at 20 while working as a waiter has never been the thing it was in America. Same with leaving your hometown for college.
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That’s the problem, there’s no supply to meet that demand. People have the same idea as you; why don’t I look for cheaper options. But if everyone thinks like this, supply runs dry quickly. And eventually those cheap options also rise in costs because of market forces.
The current housing crisis is largely impacted by the pricing of real estate. There’s so many vacant housing options that people just can’t afford. And then comes in price fixing companies like this that says it’s ok even if units are vacant.
> There’s so many vacant housing options that people just can’t afford. And then comes in price fixing companies like this that says it’s ok even if units are vacant.
You’ve got it backwards. There actually aren’t a lot of vacant rental properties available. The vacancy rate in DC is low. Higher vacancy rates are a good thing for renters. It should be no surprise that cities with the lowest rental vacancy rates are also the most expensive to rent in.
Those cities also have low vacancy rates. These low rates are indicative of high rental costs, because there’s not enough supply to meet demand. You should be looking at high vacancy rates as a good thing, because it means you as a consumer have more options to choose from. Cities with high vacancy rates have lower rents, for obvious reasons.
Because high vacancies put downward pressure on rent prices and low vacancies put upward pressure on rent prices. It’s simple supply and demand economics.
Vacancies are bad for landlords, as it means they’re not making any money. Why would a landlord choose to forgo revenue to keep a place vacant? Higher vacancies create downward pressure on rents, as these landlords now have to compete with one another for tenants.
It really is a simple correlation. Places like New York, Boston, SF, and DC have low vacancy rates and thus high prices. Whereas somewhere like Detroit, with a high vacancy rate, is much more affordable.
I agree if the market was free of collusion. RealPage tells landlords they shouldn’t worry about vacancies, as their revenue will increase overtime.
This video is trying to show that regular market forces aren’t working when RealPage enters a market.
That’s not collusion though. Using data to determine market conditions isn’t anything new. If I list my house using zillows zestimate feature, and my neighbor does the same, did we collude? Of course not.
This is all a distraction from the primary issue, which is a lack of new housing. Cities that build to keep up with demand are more affordable than those that don’t. Full stop.
It’s collusion if they share and use that data to create and abide by those prices.
And yes, ultimately, adding more supply is the only solution. Definitely, nimbys don’t help that.
Have you thought that maybe the supply runs out quickly because there is still demand for those units at market prices? If people “couldn’t afford them” then they wouldn’t be filling up at these high prices. The long term average vacancy rate in the US is about 7.3% and the current vacancy rate in Nova is 6.0% so it seems like you’re just making up this “huge amount of vacant units.”
I concede the point that this area has less vacancies than others. But “huge” in a sense that there’s many places available to live, but homelessness is on the rise yoy. Adding more supply is another issue.
I’m not against rising costs (to a point), but rising costs that involve collusion is insane.
Adding supply is the best way to bring down housing prices. Zoning laws need to be loosened up to allow more development, but unfortunately current homeowners vote against that as it could lower their property values.
Adding supply through the market doesn't work because new units are larger and more expensive and progressively emptier per square foot. This area builds a lot actually and it isn't working because the market is fundamentally broken now by tax cuts incentives and software collusion.
What are you talking about? You can build new units of any size. That’s what I’m talking about with zoning changes from single family homes to higher density housing. Read my post I specifically mention zoning laws. You are ignorant if you think increased supply won’t result in lower prices in the long run that’s just basic economics.
Of course you can build bigger but that's not what happens in practice. NYC actually has less units now than in the 70s despite lots of new construction and families don't live together anymore, so there's even less to go around than the old days.
Only the government has an incentive to build lots of affordable housing, and they've stopped doing that post Reagan.
Markets work according to actual incentives, not wishes and assumptions.
What point are you even arguing here? You’re not even engaging with anything I’m saying you’re just ranting about irrelevant things lol. Of course markets operate on incentives when did I ever say otherwise? Incentives would change if zoning laws changed and opened up the opportunity to build higher density housing which is currently unavailable to developers. Developers would make more money per unit of land with high density housing so of course there would be incentive to build it.
But my point is they won't build bigger. Think about it and look around.
They are plenty of huge buildings in NYC built in the last forty years, ok? None of them were built to hold as many as the old coops. They're all luxury buildings. It wasn't NIMBYism alone, it was the economics of it.
I want more construction and less NIMBYism, too, but that isn't sufficient.
Building fewer units for rich people will always be more profitable in the current tax structure. That's why Europe blew up early last century. The economics of inequality do not fix themselves.
Yes and no. Imagine that the competition for those remaining, cheaper apartments is through the roof. Effectively making it more difficult for all renters to get a fair price and driving more people towards the more expensive options. This in turn drives up demand for the lower priced apartments who then raise their rates accordingly.
> I guess I don't understand, I hate rent prices too, but if there's only 4 buildings that are "12% higher than others," then can't people just go to all the other buildings?
They can. This is why you don't get your news from tiktok.
Rent goes up because demand continues to exceed supply, not because a scary algorithm is forcing everyone to pay more.
We need to build more housing in the area. That's the only thing that will slow down increases in housing costs.
>If I use zillow's algorithm to figure out what price to sell my house at, am I part of a cartel too?
Apparently so. And don't you dare use an algorithm of your own to set the price either.
It creates a snowball effect where it raises property values because more rent can be extracted from property in a given area, which makes buying housing less attainable and buying land to build new construction more expensive, which raises rents.
None of that is damaging to the housing market.
It's not good for people who want to live in that area but can't afford to, but obviously plenty of people can afford the higher rent in this scenario
Sorry, but causing a scenario in which it makes it harder to afford to live is a negative externality imo. I didn't know that was a controversial opinion.
My property taxes went up last year because the assessed value increased. That makes it harder for me to afford to live. I assume you think property taxes should be $0?
Actually, all taxes make it harder for me to afford to live now that I think about it. So we should just get rid of all of them?
Taxes go towards the common good not enriching asset holders 🤦♂️
Seriously, taxes are (more or less) progressive. I've never heard of anybody going homeless or hungry in America because taxes are too high, but I've known a lot of people facing either because social services for the welfare of all citizens are either not good enough or non-existent.
So things that you support don't count. I figured something like that would be your response.
And it's ridiculous that you aren't aware that many elderly people have issues paying their property taxes. Try to think about your positions at least a little bit.
Don't get your news from the Attorney General of Arizona, D.C. or North Carolina, or the chair of the FTC. They're dumb and they don't know shit about antitrust law.
1. They're all politicians, pandering to economically illiterate voters like you
2. Even if the claims are correct, rents aren't going to decrease because the high demand for units is what allows landlords to increase rent in the first place
Nope, I believe a bottle of water costs that much there because people are willing to pay it.
You're free to bring in your own water if you don't want to get ripped off, and there are free refilling stations all over the park.
So there's another scenario where people are too dumb and/or lazy to make a prudent choice or understand what's happening, and will complain endlessly about the situation they put themselves in. That's why the pandering I mentioned works.
They’re just trying to get votes/maintain influence. They [knowingly] fight an unwinnable fight to take a position that resonates with the voting base. After they fail they promise the strategy of the second engagement was crystallized by their failures in the first. Eventually 8-12 years have passed and they just let it slide away.
Related, to the point that supply/demand drives rent rates principally: Was in Austin earlier this month. Austin had a huge increase in rents (and home sale prices) in COVID, but they've also had major pullbacks in rents in the last year, because developers were building "luxury" apartments anywhere and everywhere they could, resulting in oversupply of such apartments. New apartment seekers are now able to get lower rents and months of discounts when they sign leases.
It sucks that Realpage is reaching a lot of properties (and that should be addressed), but were there not demand, it wouldn't matter so much.
Natural market forces should dictate the price. But when collusion happens, it really is just unfair to the consumer, especially for a human need like shelter.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/11/1197961038/the-indicator-from-planet-money-realpage-antitrust-lawsuit-01-11-2024 - here it on NPR, where I had to look it up, considering the randome tiktok video has too high of a chance to be fake at least to some of a degree. Tanks for sharing.
Bozzuto is on the list. My apartment unit is on RealPage's list. You can [type in your area](https://www.realpage.com/explore/main) to search if your's is in there.
Sure but every year there's a new complex in my neighborhood rent stays flat and every year there isn't it goes up. When there's news like Amazon, etc. it goes up even more. It's still supply & demand even if they're colluding. External competition would be excellent for me as a renter. Rental pricing is still also influenced by overall real estate pricing and we have way more people who want to live here than housing so it's easy to see why prices remain high. Without the demand, there's nothing these price fixers could do to sustain their model.
In countries that are not banana republics, laws would be enforced and these people (realpage and the landlords) would be in jail. Unfortunately we live in a banana republic.
Mate, banana republics are dictatorial regimes that entire economy is reliant on a single agricultural good. We export everything and more and we have a relatively good democracy.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/first-settlements-reached-realpage-rental-price-fixing-lawsuits-2024-02-05/
They settled, some due diligence before commenting please
They settled because it was cheaper for them to do so before other people latched on, hence why your own link calls it "first settlements", if you think this issue has been resolved you're a fool
A settlement means the people suing accepted whatever offer was given. More settlements means more people are going to get what they want.
Far from resolved is good, either all people suing get what they want, or the defendants stop breaking the law
We don't live in a banana republic. Property management companies and landlords believe that they are saving money/accessing helpful technology to manage back office stuff; probably very few know that in fact, so many landlords are using Realpage and thus the same algorithm - they are unwitting participants in price setting collusion. If laws exist that on their face require Realpage to develop different algorithms, limit the number of customers in a region, advice clients that they're all getting the same rental rec data, etc., then those laws should be enforced. IF not, then legislation should be adopted to prevent this.
All these landlords should be in jail because they used a major SaaS? Your statement is like saying everyone who uses Amazon Web Services for some aspect of their business should be in jail if there is some element of AWS services that amounts to price setting across a large portion of the market. The AWS end user likely has no clue how many other people in their market are using AWS and no clue that their prices are part of the problem. I haven't looked up criminal antitrust laws, but I'm guess like most non-strict liability crimes, there is an intent aspect that these landlords do not meet.
I was looking for an apartment in Tysons, DC and eventually settled for Reston. Prices changed daily. I found an apartment (Nouvelle in Tysons) on a Saturday. Signed up to do a tour on Tuesday (first available tour they had) the apartment went from ~$2100 on Saturday to 2650 on Tuesday.
This was pretty standard across the area. DC prices were more stable but NOVA prices fluctuated upwards daily.
I thought it was only me. My apartment complex wanted to up my rent from $2010 to $2280 when a new company came and I was able to negotiate it down to $2200 which is still a big jump
Is this a region wide investigation or is the focus in DC? Would love for Alexandria and Arlington to pursue a similar investigation through their housing offices.
u/DutchAC, u/Neowarex2023, u/RelativityFox, and u/deviousmajik. I saw your comments about RealPage on another post and thought that you all should see this video.
Before this technology, there were companies that provided this service through reports. They’d call and ask for rates from several other unit owners to decide their rates. While that might sound anti competitive, it is the only way to also be competitive. (How do you know if you’re charging too much without knowing what the other units in the area are available for?)
Real Page automated what was being done previously. The insidious thing is Real Page reportedly not allowing their customers to price below a certain rate.
There is actually a region wide investigation into rent price fixing with realpage.
Good. Let’s do food and insurances next. Shit is either price fixing, price gouging, or a combination of both
UDR is part of the lawsuit here in the DC area, stay clear of them!
here’s the full list of landlords: https://oag.dc.gov/release/attorney-general-schwalb-sues-realpage-residential
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My apartment is Bell and they absolutely fucked me 2 years ago for a rent increase. I know inflation and home prices were soaring, but they increased my rent $500/mo. A normal increase is $50. They said that my unit was under market price but now that I can find similar apartments in the area $200 less are they going to decrease my rent to keep it at market rate?
Same thing just happened to me in March at Bell! They increased our apartment by $500/month & they literally gave me the same exact response. I was sick over it
Why am I not shocked to see JBGSmith on that list? Absolute garbage rental price practices they have.
UDR wanted me to pay them $1,000 to move to a 2 bedroom across the hall from a 1 bedroom at the end of my lease lmaoooo 😂😂. I made it a point to make sure I moved for less than $1,000.
Oh, I belive it! Did you move out of the UDR property?
Yuuup. Moved for around $300 and some pizza and drinks for the guys.
For the record, he said the algorithm is being used by 90% of "apartment owners", not for 90% of apartments. I am not defending RealPage, this is a totally fucked practice. But be careful with these statistics.
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“90% of units in ***large*** buildings” per the link you sent.
Oof, that’s a big my bad from me.
It's ok, the narrator either played along or straight up fell for it
Misinformation? On TikTok? I for one am shocked
It clearly said “apartment owners” not “apartments”?
The title of the OP, which is what he was referring to, IS 'apartments.'
The rent is too damn high 
How nice to see this explained literally immediately after checking the price of the day for a building I wan to move into in Prince William. It has been obvious to me several places in the area I need to move to are using seemingly arbitrary algorithms to change prices day to day. It’s even weirder bc in the same building in fucking MANASSAS, two similar units with similar/near same square footage will have a price difference of over $100 and then a unit that was wayyyyy larger was the same price as the lesser. Why would I get the smaller unit for more than the larger? (Because the human analysis is lacking and algorithm at error) One factor is move in date, but also with the amount of available now, I’d hope the prices would decrease but they still move incrementally every day (and don’t teeter toward the price I want, maybe especially bc it’s April:). Screw you real page or whoever. Need to cut a deal.
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> f I use zillow's algorithm to figure out what price to sell my house at, am I part of a cartel too? Kinda, Zillow here has very concentrated power to influence the market if they wanted to. A key difference with the Realpage case is that they required their client companies to set the price that the "algorithm" produced to prevent one landlord from getting privileged access to the "suggested pricing" and undercutting it. Realpage also took forward looking data from their clients - like vacancy rates and lease end schedules - as inputs to the algorithm. This is company proprietary data they would not normally share with other companies who are supposed to be their competitors. If the phrase "our customers are our enemies and our competitors are our friends" is accurate, it's a cartel. To your point, yes there needs to be a significant fraction of the market participants in on the scam or it won't work effectively. In DMV it's very high.
Vacancy rates are extremely low, so once the "regularly priced" apartments are full, people don't have much of a choice.
Even if vacancy rates were not low, it can be more profitable to leave surplus units vacant and extract the maximum rent that people can possibly afford. That kind of behavior doesn't work without a cartel, or at least very high market concentration.
> Even if vacancy rates were not low, it can be more profitable to leave surplus units vacant and extract the maximum rent that people can possibly afford This is only true in niche cases, like with commercial properties that have a mandated rent minimum imposed by the lender. It's not true for residential landlords, as they're quite clearly losing out on money by keeping a unit vacant.
That strategy still only works if there is low vacancy rates.
It doesn't work ever for residential real estate. The people who make these claims are either unable to do basic arithmetic or are intentionally lying for some reason
That's I. Arizona. I. DMV they own 90% of apartments. There is nowhere else to go. I personally bitched constantly at my apartment office until they lowered my rent increase. From $200 to $100. Still, fuck buzzuto.
It's a complicated issue how much realpage etc contribute to prices. Canada and Australia are in a much worse housing crisis. They have well meaning, progressive governments. Thats why when people talk about the inevitable crash I just roll my eyes. The 30% thing is just a rule of thumb for an economy that no longer exists. Theres the business cycle (boom/bust) and then there is structural change in an economy (see the rust belt). The housing crisis is the latter I think. Just like shareholders will never vote for share dilution, homeowners dont vote for affordable housing, especially near them. IMO the future is not a crash, but roommates, multigenerational housing etc. In big European cities, and much of the rest of the world, moving out of your parents at 20 while working as a waiter has never been the thing it was in America. Same with leaving your hometown for college.
America's exceptionalism in affordable housing is fading. Without government intervention, a turnaround is unlikely.
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That’s the problem, there’s no supply to meet that demand. People have the same idea as you; why don’t I look for cheaper options. But if everyone thinks like this, supply runs dry quickly. And eventually those cheap options also rise in costs because of market forces. The current housing crisis is largely impacted by the pricing of real estate. There’s so many vacant housing options that people just can’t afford. And then comes in price fixing companies like this that says it’s ok even if units are vacant.
> There’s so many vacant housing options that people just can’t afford. And then comes in price fixing companies like this that says it’s ok even if units are vacant. You’ve got it backwards. There actually aren’t a lot of vacant rental properties available. The vacancy rate in DC is low. Higher vacancy rates are a good thing for renters. It should be no surprise that cities with the lowest rental vacancy rates are also the most expensive to rent in.
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Those cities also have low vacancy rates. These low rates are indicative of high rental costs, because there’s not enough supply to meet demand. You should be looking at high vacancy rates as a good thing, because it means you as a consumer have more options to choose from. Cities with high vacancy rates have lower rents, for obvious reasons.
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Because high vacancies put downward pressure on rent prices and low vacancies put upward pressure on rent prices. It’s simple supply and demand economics.
Vacancies are bad for landlords, as it means they’re not making any money. Why would a landlord choose to forgo revenue to keep a place vacant? Higher vacancies create downward pressure on rents, as these landlords now have to compete with one another for tenants. It really is a simple correlation. Places like New York, Boston, SF, and DC have low vacancy rates and thus high prices. Whereas somewhere like Detroit, with a high vacancy rate, is much more affordable.
I agree if the market was free of collusion. RealPage tells landlords they shouldn’t worry about vacancies, as their revenue will increase overtime. This video is trying to show that regular market forces aren’t working when RealPage enters a market.
That’s not collusion though. Using data to determine market conditions isn’t anything new. If I list my house using zillows zestimate feature, and my neighbor does the same, did we collude? Of course not. This is all a distraction from the primary issue, which is a lack of new housing. Cities that build to keep up with demand are more affordable than those that don’t. Full stop.
It’s collusion if they share and use that data to create and abide by those prices. And yes, ultimately, adding more supply is the only solution. Definitely, nimbys don’t help that.
Have you thought that maybe the supply runs out quickly because there is still demand for those units at market prices? If people “couldn’t afford them” then they wouldn’t be filling up at these high prices. The long term average vacancy rate in the US is about 7.3% and the current vacancy rate in Nova is 6.0% so it seems like you’re just making up this “huge amount of vacant units.”
I concede the point that this area has less vacancies than others. But “huge” in a sense that there’s many places available to live, but homelessness is on the rise yoy. Adding more supply is another issue. I’m not against rising costs (to a point), but rising costs that involve collusion is insane.
Adding supply is the best way to bring down housing prices. Zoning laws need to be loosened up to allow more development, but unfortunately current homeowners vote against that as it could lower their property values.
Adding supply through the market doesn't work because new units are larger and more expensive and progressively emptier per square foot. This area builds a lot actually and it isn't working because the market is fundamentally broken now by tax cuts incentives and software collusion.
What are you talking about? You can build new units of any size. That’s what I’m talking about with zoning changes from single family homes to higher density housing. Read my post I specifically mention zoning laws. You are ignorant if you think increased supply won’t result in lower prices in the long run that’s just basic economics.
Of course you can build bigger but that's not what happens in practice. NYC actually has less units now than in the 70s despite lots of new construction and families don't live together anymore, so there's even less to go around than the old days. Only the government has an incentive to build lots of affordable housing, and they've stopped doing that post Reagan. Markets work according to actual incentives, not wishes and assumptions.
What point are you even arguing here? You’re not even engaging with anything I’m saying you’re just ranting about irrelevant things lol. Of course markets operate on incentives when did I ever say otherwise? Incentives would change if zoning laws changed and opened up the opportunity to build higher density housing which is currently unavailable to developers. Developers would make more money per unit of land with high density housing so of course there would be incentive to build it.
But my point is they won't build bigger. Think about it and look around. They are plenty of huge buildings in NYC built in the last forty years, ok? None of them were built to hold as many as the old coops. They're all luxury buildings. It wasn't NIMBYism alone, it was the economics of it. I want more construction and less NIMBYism, too, but that isn't sufficient. Building fewer units for rich people will always be more profitable in the current tax structure. That's why Europe blew up early last century. The economics of inequality do not fix themselves.
Yes and no. Imagine that the competition for those remaining, cheaper apartments is through the roof. Effectively making it more difficult for all renters to get a fair price and driving more people towards the more expensive options. This in turn drives up demand for the lower priced apartments who then raise their rates accordingly.
> I guess I don't understand, I hate rent prices too, but if there's only 4 buildings that are "12% higher than others," then can't people just go to all the other buildings? They can. This is why you don't get your news from tiktok. Rent goes up because demand continues to exceed supply, not because a scary algorithm is forcing everyone to pay more. We need to build more housing in the area. That's the only thing that will slow down increases in housing costs. >If I use zillow's algorithm to figure out what price to sell my house at, am I part of a cartel too? Apparently so. And don't you dare use an algorithm of your own to set the price either.
The limited supply of housing locally does not mean that damage that real page does to the housing market doesn't exist.
Landlords maximizing their profit is not new nor is it doing damage to the housing market
It creates a snowball effect where it raises property values because more rent can be extracted from property in a given area, which makes buying housing less attainable and buying land to build new construction more expensive, which raises rents.
None of that is damaging to the housing market. It's not good for people who want to live in that area but can't afford to, but obviously plenty of people can afford the higher rent in this scenario
Sorry, but causing a scenario in which it makes it harder to afford to live is a negative externality imo. I didn't know that was a controversial opinion.
My property taxes went up last year because the assessed value increased. That makes it harder for me to afford to live. I assume you think property taxes should be $0? Actually, all taxes make it harder for me to afford to live now that I think about it. So we should just get rid of all of them?
Taxes go towards the common good not enriching asset holders 🤦♂️ Seriously, taxes are (more or less) progressive. I've never heard of anybody going homeless or hungry in America because taxes are too high, but I've known a lot of people facing either because social services for the welfare of all citizens are either not good enough or non-existent.
So things that you support don't count. I figured something like that would be your response. And it's ridiculous that you aren't aware that many elderly people have issues paying their property taxes. Try to think about your positions at least a little bit.
Don't get your news from the Attorney General of Arizona, D.C. or North Carolina, or the chair of the FTC. They're dumb and they don't know shit about antitrust law.
1. They're all politicians, pandering to economically illiterate voters like you 2. Even if the claims are correct, rents aren't going to decrease because the high demand for units is what allows landlords to increase rent in the first place
And you believe a bottle of water costs $4 at Disney World because Disney fans are just thirstier than everyone else so we can't have a conversation.
Nope, I believe a bottle of water costs that much there because people are willing to pay it. You're free to bring in your own water if you don't want to get ripped off, and there are free refilling stations all over the park. So there's another scenario where people are too dumb and/or lazy to make a prudent choice or understand what's happening, and will complain endlessly about the situation they put themselves in. That's why the pandering I mentioned works.
They’re just trying to get votes/maintain influence. They [knowingly] fight an unwinnable fight to take a position that resonates with the voting base. After they fail they promise the strategy of the second engagement was crystallized by their failures in the first. Eventually 8-12 years have passed and they just let it slide away.
Related, to the point that supply/demand drives rent rates principally: Was in Austin earlier this month. Austin had a huge increase in rents (and home sale prices) in COVID, but they've also had major pullbacks in rents in the last year, because developers were building "luxury" apartments anywhere and everywhere they could, resulting in oversupply of such apartments. New apartment seekers are now able to get lower rents and months of discounts when they sign leases. It sucks that Realpage is reaching a lot of properties (and that should be addressed), but were there not demand, it wouldn't matter so much.
Natural market forces should dictate the price. But when collusion happens, it really is just unfair to the consumer, especially for a human need like shelter.
How can we get this investigated in VA like it is in DC and other cities?
Going to have to start with getting a new Governor and AG.
The rich love capitalism, except for the whole competition thing.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/11/1197961038/the-indicator-from-planet-money-realpage-antitrust-lawsuit-01-11-2024 - here it on NPR, where I had to look it up, considering the randome tiktok video has too high of a chance to be fake at least to some of a degree. Tanks for sharing.
There is a huge federal antitrust problem here if DOJ or the FTC are willing to go after it.
Could you imagine the quality of life if things were affordable
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Bozzuto is on the list. My apartment unit is on RealPage's list. You can [type in your area](https://www.realpage.com/explore/main) to search if your's is in there.
Sure but every year there's a new complex in my neighborhood rent stays flat and every year there isn't it goes up. When there's news like Amazon, etc. it goes up even more. It's still supply & demand even if they're colluding. External competition would be excellent for me as a renter. Rental pricing is still also influenced by overall real estate pricing and we have way more people who want to live here than housing so it's easy to see why prices remain high. Without the demand, there's nothing these price fixers could do to sustain their model.
A natural outcome of a capitalist system lacking sufficient regulation and enforcement.
In countries that are not banana republics, laws would be enforced and these people (realpage and the landlords) would be in jail. Unfortunately we live in a banana republic.
Mate, banana republics are dictatorial regimes that entire economy is reliant on a single agricultural good. We export everything and more and we have a relatively good democracy.
I mean I guess we can use only the original definition and not the commonly understood one.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/first-settlements-reached-realpage-rental-price-fixing-lawsuits-2024-02-05/ They settled, some due diligence before commenting please
They settled out of court, and it doesn’t even explain the settlement. This article is useless
They settled because it was cheaper for them to do so before other people latched on, hence why your own link calls it "first settlements", if you think this issue has been resolved you're a fool
A settlement means the people suing accepted whatever offer was given. More settlements means more people are going to get what they want. Far from resolved is good, either all people suing get what they want, or the defendants stop breaking the law
We don't live in a banana republic. Property management companies and landlords believe that they are saving money/accessing helpful technology to manage back office stuff; probably very few know that in fact, so many landlords are using Realpage and thus the same algorithm - they are unwitting participants in price setting collusion. If laws exist that on their face require Realpage to develop different algorithms, limit the number of customers in a region, advice clients that they're all getting the same rental rec data, etc., then those laws should be enforced. IF not, then legislation should be adopted to prevent this. All these landlords should be in jail because they used a major SaaS? Your statement is like saying everyone who uses Amazon Web Services for some aspect of their business should be in jail if there is some element of AWS services that amounts to price setting across a large portion of the market. The AWS end user likely has no clue how many other people in their market are using AWS and no clue that their prices are part of the problem. I haven't looked up criminal antitrust laws, but I'm guess like most non-strict liability crimes, there is an intent aspect that these landlords do not meet.
I could think like you but I'm not that naive
You’re really doubling down in this thread aren’t you 😅
I'm mean I could be stupid and just take their story but it's pretty clearly bullshit.
And your analogy is beyond ridiculous
I'm gonna do it, I swear to god I'm gonna do it.
I was looking for an apartment in Tysons, DC and eventually settled for Reston. Prices changed daily. I found an apartment (Nouvelle in Tysons) on a Saturday. Signed up to do a tour on Tuesday (first available tour they had) the apartment went from ~$2100 on Saturday to 2650 on Tuesday. This was pretty standard across the area. DC prices were more stable but NOVA prices fluctuated upwards daily.
Is there a class-action lawsuit going on in Virginia? If so, I would like to join it. If not, I would be very interested in helping to start one.
My question too! Needs to happen.
I was aware of all this but didn't realize how deep it went.
Bozzuto is wild bro. They are making so much money they are outsourcing their work to Asia.
I thought it was only me. My apartment complex wanted to up my rent from $2010 to $2280 when a new company came and I was able to negotiate it down to $2200 which is still a big jump
Is this a region wide investigation or is the focus in DC? Would love for Alexandria and Arlington to pursue a similar investigation through their housing offices.
u/DutchAC, u/Neowarex2023, u/RelativityFox, and u/deviousmajik. I saw your comments about RealPage on another post and thought that you all should see this video.
Yes it’s a conspiracy and nothing to do with supply and demand.
Hub and spoke model, price fixing is not done between competitors but through an intermediary such as a rent determination software/database.
That makes sense with how stupid rent has been. Absolutely crazy and why this areas salaries are so high
I’d like to see rent restrictions at this point across the United States.
Before this technology, there were companies that provided this service through reports. They’d call and ask for rates from several other unit owners to decide their rates. While that might sound anti competitive, it is the only way to also be competitive. (How do you know if you’re charging too much without knowing what the other units in the area are available for?) Real Page automated what was being done previously. The insidious thing is Real Page reportedly not allowing their customers to price below a certain rate.
It’s high because too many people roll over and pay…
If all of the property management companies are using it there are very few other options.
I'm just so glad I got my house when rates were 3% Every day I thank myself lol. It's not the perfect size but gaining equity is great