Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says

Re:Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC... by lotsofpulp on Thursday November 02, 2023 @12:34PM (#38116111)

I have noticed Zillow removing listing history for houses in my area. If the house does not sell, then sometimes it is taken off the market and the fact that it was listed for sale and the prices and the dates is deleted.

Or a house where the seller is dropping prices for many months will have the old data deleted, and the history only shows that it was just put up for sale at a lower price than before.

I don't know if this is a feature of MLS, but Zillow already had the data, so I cannot think of a reason that they would remove the data unless they wanted to hide the fact that the houses are not moving at the original prices.

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Re:Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC... by xyzelement on Thursday November 02, 2023 @01:36PM (#38117206)

That's very weird. I've definitely seen "price reduction history" on listings when I was looking for a house a few years ago.

BTW this is one of those cases where having an agent helps you. A good agent will be able to tell you "oh there's a lot of houses coming on the market, getting no bids, and coming off" if you don't pick up that insight yourself.

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Re:Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC... by lotsofpulp on Thursday November 02, 2023 @01:40PM (#38117276)

I see price reduction history even now. But started a couple months ago, some of the listings started losing their price reduction history.

And it’s selectively deleted too. For example, one house, you can see the price reductions in 2010/2011, and then it never sold. And they tried selling again, and reduced price, and once again, the house didn’t sell, but this time, all of the information about this year and last year was deleted.

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