Price matching was something that really worked in the past, again in the days before mass digitization and cheap storage/printing. Add in there are only a few major retailers left, it becomes easy to make a product for each of them.

CostCow will have product 0ICU812a

WalWart will have product 0ICU812b

Then they don't have to actually price match because they are "different products"

Online stores seem to match prices; when I google for some electronic equipment (like headphones or MIDI controllers), many stores have almost equal prices for the same item. Of course there is a chance that all they are owned by the same entity, but it is not very plausible.

That's probably the MSRP for the item. (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/manufacturers-suggested...)

that's not really price fixing in so much that price matching in this manner is known to lead to a race to the bottom.

this is very different from, "leasing agent, set this high price or get fired by your employer."

The rub is that if store and store b got together and negotiated a price they would stick to and not try to undercut each other, that's price fixing, and that is what realpage is doing on a MASSIVE scale.

'Cartel/Corporate' owners own ~70% of the units in Seattle. 11 total companies (big names you should know like gray star and equity residential), to the one they all use realpage. That's 70% of the market price fixed, MINIMUM.

Before your second paragraph: I Googled about it and found this ProPublica story: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

The exact quote:

    > In one neighborhood in Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of apartments were overseen by just 10 property managers, every single one of which used pricing software sold by RealPage.

To be clear, that is "one neighborhood" in Seattle. Your second paragraph makes it seem like all of Seattle. To be clear, in neighborhoods with lots of new high rise buildings, this pattern seems normal to me: About 10 companies (or less) do most of the property management.

That neighborhood is the neighborhood amazon is in South Lake Union. But as far as I can tell every corporate building in town uses them which is a wild amount of buildings.