Rent overrides required written business justifications, would often trigger follow ups to the agent attempting the override and then their management to dissuade them, and eventually might be refused in the end.
Realpage monitored compliance of customers using their provided prices and those who didn’t meet a certain level would be kicked off the platform.
Pages 17-22 here: https://oag.dc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/DC%20OAG%20Re...
This part jumps out:
> the landlord’s regional manager
Why would the owner of a property have a regional manager? That makes it sound like they're deliberately conflating local property managers with actual landlords. I suppose if the actual landlords are passive REIT investors, then there's still a possibility of actual collusion.
In this game theory setup, breaking from the cartel only pays off with excess supply (long vacancies, new units you could lease), which is fairly atypical especially bc of regulatory hurdles. If the market is supply constrained, being part of a cartel maximizes profits. Over longer periods, a competitor could increase supply and inject some dynamism that rewards breaking from the cartel, but for urban/suburban apartment complexes, this is long time and of limited effect to the cartel's pricing power.
This is why the FTC exists to prevent this type of illegal coordination (bc it's so attractive to profits!)
Edit: typo