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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

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The key difference is this:

> [E]very morning, RealPage provides participating Lessors with recommended price levels. Lessors typically must communicate to a RealPage “Pricing Advisor” that they have “accept[ed]” or “confirm[ed] the “approved pricing” within a specified time frame. If Lessors wish to diverge from the “approved pricing” they must submit reasoning for doing so and await approval.

[...]

> But RealPage emphasizes the need for discipline among participating Lessors and urges them that for its coordinated algorithmic pricing to be the most successful in increasing rents, participating Lessors must adopt RealPage’s pricing at least 80% of the time.

This organization was enforcing 'discipline' among the participants to make sure that they didn't undercut each other too often. That's a cartel.

1. https://cohost.org/morayati/post/925436-i-saw-real-page-s-cr...

This sounds like a very weasely framing. Is RealPage putting a gun to landlord's heads? I find it much more likely that they're saying if you aren't listening to our recommendations, we can't guarantee that you'll benefit from them. If you're disagreeing with their algorithm more than 20% of the time, that means you're basically just using your own pricing method which happens to match with RealPage's sometimes.

I had to read through some of the actual complaint to see what the deal was. The allegation is that RealPage did not just provide pricing data, but went to great lengths, including hiring secret shoppers, to enforce that housing companies not deviate from their price. This would appear, if true, to be a clear violation of antitrust law. This of course comes down to whatever is demonstrated in court to be true.

These companies don't care. A lot of these tenant management companies do legal grey area things and landlords pay for it (even though it's begging to be tackled). A good example is they keep tenant blacklists based on scraped court records [1]. Landlords are not supposed to be using stuff like this. I wouldn't have imagined they are price fixing too.

To remain in compliance with the law, OAG recommends landlords and property owners refrain from requesting a potential tenant’s court records and rental histories altogether and cease relationships with tenant screening bureaus who continue to provide court records. Any New Yorker who believes that they have been denied an apartment because of their rental history should submit a tenant blacklisting complaint online with OAG.

In its investigation of Clipper Equity, OAG determined the company had improperly obtained housing court records for 25 potential tenants and then denied housing to seven of those same applicants. The OAG found that Clipper thus violated the law. Clipper also violated city and state Human Rights laws by requiring potential tenants to disclose their marital status. As part of the agreement, Clipper Equity will take the necessary steps to comply with the laws it broke and has committed to ending its discriminatory screening policies.

[1] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-...

> A lot of these tenant management companies do legal grey area things and landlords pay for it (even though it's begging to be tackled).

Back when I was renting (and this I acknowledge isn't even a grey area thing, just shady), I even called out a small local PM company... their "main" website, listing properties was all about their "ethics" and "fairness" and "transparency". But when you went into the "Owners" section you got then told to visit a different site, which talked about how the company would "work with you" to get "the maximum value for your property, strategically adjusting rental pricing upwards" while "shielding the landlord".

Maybe in New York, but in most other states, it is perfectly legal.

What about the time component? Holding a market wide price even for a month can demoralize anyone into accepting the rent if you need to move in a month. Time pressure is the multiplier here. You cannot wait out being homeless by being combative against unreasonable rent.

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