Re:I saw RealPage's crappy rent-jacking-up software so you d...
by kilotaras on Sunday February 26, 2023 @03:26PM
(#34949010)
> software can help create an inefficient market where ... suppliers of housing take a 5-20% hit on "volume" for a larger increase in price that more than offsets the rate of empty units.
Right, if one can get majority of the landlords to collude and government doesn't crack on collusion - this software would create such market.
Until we're in such dire situation: software is expediting price discovery, discovered prices are high because we don't build enough, we don't build enough because there's ridiculous amount of red tape, and doing anything that doesn't lead to more housing being built is spending time and effort on wrong problem.
This software can affect the market price beyond just accelerating the speed at which it reaches equilibrium. The software can help create an inefficient market where suppliers of housing are no longer competing against each other and instead all, together, take a 5-20% hit on "volume" for a larger increase in price that more than offsets the rate of empty units.
Similar to OPEC when OPEC was overwhelmingly dominant (before shale oil/shale gas explosion in USA/Russia).
In a competitive market without this software, each individual player would try harder to reach 0% vacancy because each marginal unit sold would be nearly pure profit, and this could drive prices lower than leaving any units empty.