U.S. landlords who use RealPage products to set prices on rental apartments are facing accusations of collusion.
  • A group of lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the United States
  • A complaint filed by Washington D.C.’s Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider
  • RealPage recommends prices for roughly 4.5 million housing units in the United States
  • RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions

A group of renters in the U.S. say their landlords are using software to deliver inflated rent hikes.

“We’ve been told as tenants by employees of Equity that the software takes empathy out of the equation. So they can charge whatever the software tells them to charge,” said Kevin Weller, a tenant at Portside Towers since 2021.

Tenants say the management started to increase prices substantially after giving renters concessions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      This right here.

      I live in a very dense city, which means building residential towers is usually the only reasonable way to quickly increase housing density. And we desperately need housing.

      Large buildings can cost billions to build. You need a government or corporation to organize around if you’re going to make that happen. And unless you’re China or the USSR in the 70’s, going the government route is going to be damn near impossible right now.

      Best option is to regulate private industry.

      • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
        5·
        10 months ago

        Let corporations build them, don’t let them own them.

        If they build a 100 unit apartment building, don’t let the corporation just rent them all out themselves.

        Force them to be sold to individuals. That keeps the overall condo prices competitive, and then people who buy them can then rent them out on an individual basis for those who prefer not to / can’t purchase a condo outright.

        Limit how many residential units a corporation can own and incrementally increase taxes for every unit above that limit.

        Limit how many corporations one person can own. No more of this bullshit 20 numbered companies in one person’s name to get around shitty business practices.

    • novibe@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      A very easy solution is for the government to build public housing? Isn’t it rather obvious? It completely fix all things you talked about.

      Buildings get built, rents are cheaper, and it doesn’t matter if the “returns” are lower than the stock market. The government doesn’t give a fuck about returns, they print the money.

      Edit: and I also think it’s pretty fucking obvious why this easy simple and direct solution is not applied. Landowners and capitalists are in complete collusion. The classes are mixing in ways that they are indistinguishable now. And the government is completely controlled by capitalists. They will never cut their profits and means of control. They won’t allow it.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        5·
        10 months ago

        Public housing the US was historically federally funded and was for low income people. It was one of those liberal solutions that tries to solve something, but gets stuck in a system that is already racist, and then the whole thing is made worse by conservatives.

        Social housing, where cities build housing themselves, can be a way out. Most cities don’t have a lot of experience doing this, so it’s going to have to start out with a few small projects. It can be mixed income instead of low income (which tended to support red lining).

        Another possibility is for cities to use their leverage with developers to favor unionized shops. This may not be possible under existing state laws, however.

        • novibe@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Definitely should be mixed income, and the planning for it is better handled more locally (neighbourhood/borough, city, town etc.). But it should be funded federally, cause cities can’t print money. All development they make has to be funded by taxes. The federal government doesn’t have to earn a dime, they can just print a couple hundred billion and distribute it to all the major population centers to develop public housing and infrastructure however they see best. That would work best imo