I suppose only time will tell.
We don't know how many housing units use Realpage pricing algorithms in 2024, but in 2017 when Realpage bought the tech, it was being used in 1.5 million rentals (https://www.realpage.com/news/realpage-to-acquire-lease-rent...) and there were 43 million rentals in the US, which means nationally they had less than 4% marketshare.
Obviously, cartel behavior (raising prices above market) does not work if you have 4% of the market. Perhaps their sales have gone up 20X in 7 years and they have enough market power for cartel behavior (doubtful)? Perhaps they have a low marketshare nationally, but they have a high marketshare in a few specific markets? Maybe, lets see what the DoJ says.
It’s like complaining about a monopoly on lawn mowing. Owners can always choose to mow their own lawns if they don’t like the cost of hiring it out.
https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2023/04/quarte...
I think it's very much this. National market share is meaningless. I live in Northern Virginia -- some SFH that rents in another market is meaningless for someone looking for an apartment here. In this area, it seems very much that all large multi-unit apartment buildings use RealPage. Individually owned condos that are rented out exist, but of course their quantity is very tiny compared to the number of apartment towers/complexes. SFHs, likewise, are poor substitutes, because someone in the price range of a studio, 1 or 2 bedroom unit isn't going to rent a SFH and splitting a SFH brings problems of its own.
They’re also super glib about it online https://www.realpage.com/analytics/phoenix-apartment-rent-gr...
IMHO automated price raising should be considered problematic or at least suspicious.
Corporate landlords use RealPage in Austin, Minneapolis yet rents fall there because of supply of new housing.
RealPage does impact rental prices, but only marginally, and the real impact to prices is from supply constraint + demand.
If there is enough supply, any realpage algorithm wont matter much because of market forces. Market forces trump everything
Unless a certain company interferes with market forces — aka the whole purpose of this lawsuit.
If you need a place to live, what’re you going to do, be homeless? They have enough of the market in some cities to impact the market in a way that distorts the prices for everyone. Market forces cannot operate when companies act anticompetitively
even if realpage disappears overnight, rent prices wont fall because the new construction is outlawed by the NIMBYs.
fix new construction via zoning reform if you want to actually help people
People aren't pool balls bouncing around on a table they are fully capable of serving their interests.
Its weird to argue against the obvious conclusion that price fixing increases price
I was under the impression this was quite common, though I have no evidence and would love to be shown otherwise!
Rental prices in the USA keep going up primarily due to a housing shortage.
Revenue optimization algorithms like realpage's do genuinely increase rents by about 2-5%, because without them fee-based property managers lower rents below market-clearing price in order to make it easier on themselves.
The increased rent that comes from using these algorithms is, in my opinion, not really anti-competitive. If you only used public information for the pricing algorithm, you'd get largely the same prices out of the system. In almost all rental markets, algorithmic pricing of any sort doesn't have high enough market share to see success by anticompetitive price-fixing, since most suppliers of housing don't use it.
Apartment rents are crazy high because there simply isnt enough housing, and we dont let people build enough dense housing near jobs. Going after Realpage, or blackrock, or landlords, or AirBnB is just trying to find a scapegoat, when the hard truth is we need to let people build more housing near where the jobs are.