> Still, the impression given to the property's management team is that a person (possibly a customer service grunt) is doing some kind of "final review," manually clicking a box or even just making sure they don't drop below 80% acceptance.

Or making sure their leasing agents aren't issuing leases that will lose the company money.

If the building's budgets are based around leasing apartments at at least $2/sqft, and leasing agents start issuing leases at $1.50/sqft without anyone else knowing or approving, there's going to be a problem. Those leasing agents aren't always privy (or even care to know) about the budgets of the building.

If a waiter starts selling the $5 hamburgers for $1, do you think the business is going to do well? Should the waiter have the ability to arbitrarily decide menu prices?

That isn't at all the same. You could handle that by ensuring the leasing agent's manager sees all the leases going through.

This is a cartel going around making sure that all the businesses are playing ball, so they can set prices for everyone how they see fit.

Yeah and you could have the manager at the restaurant inspect everyone's checks or you can just standardize price strategies for the location and auto-approve leases which meet established criteria.