The software is recommending keeping units empty in areas with rental shortages because it pushes up prices.
It becomes an issue if a group of landlords agree not to rent below a certain threshold in a community. This is classic price fixing - leaving renters no alternative other than paying the minimum rate set.
This is exactly what's happening, though. Landlords using RealPage/YieldStar are required to follow its guidelines and need permissions from the company to make exceptions. It's technology mediated collusion to price-fix.
Heavily disagree. There is everything wrong with that. Housing should not be an investment or a profit source at all
I also disagree, it isn't right.
While real estate is commonly accepted as one of the prominent investment type of asset, it has been challenged with excellent arguments against it.
Who would build housing, then?
It's fine if people make a profit at providing essential goods as long as there's enough surplus to redistribute to those who markets can't reach.
No one complains about farmers profiting from farms. We care about people going hungry, so we buy some food from tax revenues and help feed them.
I don't see the possible parallel with farmers, all there is in common is land potentially owned as property. Farmers bear fruits through labour. Real estate investors bear returns on capital.
That's interesting you mention some people going hungry, most people's inability to slap logs together to make shelter, and resorting to tax collection and distribution.
There have been many attempts to eliminate bearing returns on capital. They all resulted in a prostrate, non-functioning economy. There are two input requirements for a functioning business:
1. labor
2. capital
Neither can come for free.
> We get it, you have rentals
Nope.
So yes, there is something wrong with it. Instead of letting the prices float to the settling rate of the market, they're being manipulated to reach a specific financial goal.
That is morally reprehensible, especially when it comes to shelter.
That's like saying there's nothing wrong from profiteering during a crisis. Are you for stores drastically increasing prices on essentials like water and food during a natural disaster?
Here's the thing. When there's a natural disaster, it used to be that everybody outside the disaster zone would fill jerry cans with gas, load up their pickup trucks with supplies, and immediately drive into the disaster zone and sell it with high prices. They'd get there far faster than the government.
With the anti-gouging laws, nobody bothers doing that anymore.
The result is (pick one):
1. no anti-gouging laws. Gas and supplies are available.
2. anti-gouging laws. No supplies are available.
In which case are the people needing supplies better off?
With 2. We can look into the application of these laws and figure out why nobody is picking up the opportunity to reasonably profit by making gas and supplies available.
Profeetering is defined as taking advantage of a situation to increase prices beyond "reasonable"
The law is clear with one thing: profteering by committing a crime is legally wrong.
It leaves us with cases where no crime was committed. But this post argues collusion happened in the case of property let pricing. let's not make the gasless situation the rule to the exceptions.
A reasonable price is what people are willing to pay for it. It's that old Law of Supply and Demand again.
> The law is clear with one thing: profteering by committing a crime is legally wrong.
Enjoy the inevitable resulting shortages, then.
BTW, anti-gouging laws also cause hoarding, making the shortages even worse.
All illegal tactics.
But I give it to you, bureaucratic measures have shown again and again to have even more nefast consequences than business criminals doings.
"unreasonable pricing" is a nebulous undefined concept.
> hoarding
Hoarding only happens when the government tries to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand. It is not a natural state of free markets.
Whenever the government tries to repeal the LoS+D, all kinds of worse consequences result.
It applied in Communist countries, too, and nobody tried harder to repeal it than they did.
> Watching the American brand of capitalism rot slowly from the inside
Caused by the constant misguided attempts to repeal the LoS&D. Rent control is a n illustrative example.
The reason supplies aren't available is the local supply is out of action from the disaster, and nobody has any incentive to bring supplies in to the disaster zone.
Scalping by definition causes a shortage due to speculators buying up large quantities of something with the plans of selling it at an inflated price caused by a lack of supply.
It isn't the only reason, but saying it doesn't cause shortages is absurd. Availability of things like masks, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper rapidly recovered once people who drove across entire states emptying shelves were shut down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/technology/matt-colvin-ha...
The only purpose to scalping is reselling it. Not taking it out of supply.
> caused by a lack of supply.
Scalping neither increases nor decreases supply.
> Availability of things like masks, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper rapidly recovered once people who drove across entire states emptying shelves were shut down.
People were hoarding, not scalping. And they were hoarding because stores were not allowed to increase the price.
They were hoarding items in high demand with the intention to sell them way above market rate. If only there was a word for that...
It's called "arbitrage" and is a normal part of a functioning market.
Do you really think that's better?
> Not everyone is after a buck
Not enough to run a working economy on.