I think they’re talking about more sensitive internal numbers. What are the costs and margins on the unit? How quickly are units moving at a certain price? What’s the turnover at particular prices?
I think the core mechanics bear some similarities to insider trading, with a third party “washing” the non-public information.
Yeah that's my understanding of it too "competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage nonpublic, competitively sensitive information about their apartment rental rates and other lease terms".
I.e. realPage has an oracle view of all the lease ending times etc, so it knows for instance, this next July there's going to be very few availability, so boost all the rents by X%
I guess there's a "private price" if the apartment complex share what, after all negotiations, the renter ended up signing for. It can be more than what was on the public website, if they ended up signing for a shorter lease, or less if the apartment ended up needing to throw in "first month free" etc.
There's also private price of lease renewals done before the unit is put for rent on the website.
I added "private prices" as one of the factors because the official DOJ wording in the complaint mentions "nonpublic/confidential/sensitive" prices in 3 different places:
>The complaint alleges that RealPage contracts with competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage nonpublic, competitively sensitive information about their apartment rental rates
>“We allege that RealPage’s pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents.
>Landlords agree to share their competitively sensitive data with RealPage in return for pricing recommendations and decisions that are the result of combining and analyzing competitors’ sensitive data. *