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Comment by huitzitziltzin | Hacker News Reader

So, I view this case as likely unsettled under current US antitrust law.

The underlying behavior seems really objectionable and should be illegal. The question is whether it is actually illegal under the law.

If a bunch of firms use the same software to set prices but do so independently and without any attempt to coordinate with each other… that’s a pretty decent defense?

(Can they argue that they had no knowledge of their competitors’ use of the software? There may of course be internal emails saying “we know X is also using it.” Suppose there aren’t AND the software vendor promised exclusivity to all of them independently. Would we want this to be illegal? What if all of the firms offer similar products and set prices by estimating the same demand curve?? This becomes a little far fetched of course.)

I don’t view this as obviously “per se illegal” territory. I would love to be wrong bc yeah it’s really objectionable, but I don’t think the case is a slam dunk.

So called “algorithmic collusion” of which this is likely an example is an unsettled area of theory

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Lawyer here. Hard disagree. The software is sold for the purpose of reducing competition, and gives advice on how to best achieve that. Everyone colluding is buying and using the software with a goal of not competing with each other.

That is just about a textbook case.

You can remove the software. Imagine you all pay someone to write a number on a piece of paper that gets posted on a light pole once a month. You don't get a say what the number is, but you all agree to set prices at that number 80% of the time.

This is illegal. Even if you remove the 80% and say "we recommend you use this number 80% of the time to maximize your non competition", it would be illegal

This is not a close case. Fixing the price this way is illegal. Agreeing not to compete at all is illegal. It does not matter if you get someone else to set the price. At the point you all agree not to compete, you've clearly violated the act.

As for whether it's per-se illegal, per-se illegal went out the window on basically all illegal acts under the sherman act over the past few decades, except a few remaining forms of price-fixing.

But you would still win the cases under the rule of reason anyway, and it would not be close there either.

People seem really hung up on whether they agreed with each other explicitly.

They don't have to. Conspiracy suffices. Tacit agreement is not illegal, but it has to be truly tacit. This is not. As I said elsewhere: it is illegal for them to conspire to not compete matter what the form of the conspiracy.

However if they just aren't competing, you can't order them to compete.

This is a clear case of the former - they are conspiring towards a common non competition goal. They knew what would happen if they conspired this way.

It's like trying to avoid a conspiracy to commit murder charge by saying you never explicitly agreed to hire a particular hitman, you instead just followed the directions some software gave you when it said "in order to maximize the possibility of your husband being dead, we recommend depositing at least five million at the following address". Good luck with your claim that you didn't agree to anything with anyone - you were just maximizing some probabilities.

Hell, i bet when they do discovery the company has not been as careful as they think, and there are chats/emails about how successfully they've been able to destroy competition or raise prices or whatever. Because there always is.

Is the Sherman Antitrust Act the legal basis for the lawsuit against the software company?

The Sherman Antitrust Act seems to deal with interstate commerce. Clearly the software is sold in many states. Some rental markets are multi-state. Some apartment management companies are multi-state. Would it apply to those rental markets and management companies that are not interstate?

I don't know about merits of this case but some of the controlling interstate commerce interpretations are quite broad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn Even growing your own wheat affects interstate commerce: your alternative to growing it yourself is buying it on the open market. This is an activity which, in aggregate across thousands of farmers, would affect interstate commerce.

In general, most state antitrust and unfair competition laws mirror the Sherman act. So even if you could construct a purely intrastate scenario, it would not make much difference in practice.

The supreme court says raising your own cattle for your own personal consumption is interstate commerce because you are replacing a purchase of beef in an interstate market.

So, you don't even have to participate in commerce for your actions to be considered "interstate commerce," much less participate in an actual interstate commerce.

One of the best IAAL posts ever.

Heh, dannybee once called me (we work for the same employer) and said: "I see you are using a particular pointer analysis algorithm. Stop it right now, it's tainted with patents. BTW I am a lawyer. But: I'm also a pointer analysis expert, and you don't want that algorithm, it sucks, this other one is better."

I'm confident the number of lawyers with pointer analysis expertise in this world can be counted on the fingers of one hand... probably even after a gruesome lawnmower accident.

There's a weird thing going on with lawyers who are also compiler nerds. We have more than one of them on HN.

There is always a five forces slide. Always.

I really hope you're right. But I really wonder if it'd actually hold up if tested. I don't want to wildly derail the conversation, but I can't help but observe - https://www.realpage.com/news/crow-holdings-enters-strategic...

Maybe it'll all work out.

Slack/Teams, the downfall of major corps. I bet once they do discovery on them, they'd come across some juicy evidence.

Not a lawyer, you made this pretty easy to understand, and clearcut collusion.

Also, your example for the hitman would make a great half-serious murder comedy movie

They did coordinate: the software had a policy that you had to take their recommendation at least n% of the time (I think 80?)

Edit: Per discussion below, it was merely strongly encouraged and effectively followed (in practice) to take the recommendation at least 80% of the time... in order to raise prices together...

This might end up being the lynchpin - the software sounds like a textbook cartel.

This fact either make it 100% a cartel or is actually false and keep being repeated on HN for some reason.

I don't think that is true from reading the complaint - there wasnt any mandatory requirement, but guidelines on how to use the algorithm.

https://www.hausfeld.com/media/550bhzyp/realpage-complaint-f...

Paragraph 7

“As one Lessor explains, while ‘we are all technically competitors’ RealPage ‘helps us work together’”

“RealPage explains that for its services to be most effective in increasing rents, Lessors must accept the pricing at least 80 percent of the time”

Yeah this is collusion.

"Collusion as a service."

The clients have plausible deniability because how can they know if everybody else is using it, and the service provider is "just a recommendation", so they're not guilty either.

If it's not ruled illegal (and it should be) then it seems like a great business model to copy in other markets.

They know that it works by competitors “working together”, it doesn’t matter whether they communicate via language or through prices combined with a service that both explains how it works and dictates how they all behave.

One piece of confusion here is that you do not actually have to prove a literal explicit agreement between the parties to be successful.

While tacit collusion is not itself illegal, conspiracy is.

Put another way:

You can prohibit folks from agreeing not to compete, no matter what form that agreement takes. You don't have to know who you are avoiding competition with, etc

However you can't order people to compete just because they aren't

> "Collusion as a service."

This has become a general problem with outsourcing and we really need to update the law on this.

Big hotel chains outsource their housekeeping--the chain doesn't pay under minimum wage--it just bids out the contract so the contractor can't possibly win the bid without paying under minimum wage.

The law needs to be updated so that fines and punishments against a subcontractor also need to be enforceable against the parent, as well.

'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.'

They claimed 80% was the level needed to see effectiveness. That’s not the same thing as “requiring” anything of their customers.

Effectiveness of what? Price fixing?

I don’t know. But the claim that the commercial agreement with RealPage was contingent on accepting its recommendations 80% of the time is false.

I edited the comment above, but as mentioned: the thing they're requesting 80% coordination to accomplish is indeed price fixing, ergo cartel.

I've read the complaint before. Nowhere does it say that users are penalized for not following the model.

Keep in mind that this is a document written by the prosecution and completely one-sided. Paragraph 7 says "RealPage explains that for its services to be most effective in increasing rents, Lessors must accept the pricing at least eighty percent of the time“

That is very different than what the poster above me claimed. Nobody has kicked out of the service for not following recommendations. The closest thing to a penalty that the document can come up with is that real page will call people and inquire why they aren't following the recommendations

Sure, I edited the above comment. Fortunately punishment for not colluding is not actually a necessary feature of cartels, only the collusion is. Which this obviously is.

I think part of the case is a slam dunk. RealPage offers multiple services.

One where RealPage gives you a recommended price and you are free to choose whatever price you want. They might ask you something along the lines of "why didnt you use our price?", but nothing is binding. This is like kelly blue book or a price consultant for apartments.

The other is the AutoPilot feature, where RealPage "takes the wheel" and set/publishes the listing price for you based on their model. The property owner is out of the loop, and RealPage is a single entity setting all of the prices for the subscribers.

I think the first case is pretty clearly legal, and the second has some valid concerns.

The point of both services is to help landlords maximize profit, but that isnt illegal by itself.

I dont think it’s quite blue book, because it’s personalised to that property, right? It’s probably the personalisation that really differentiates it and I suspect it’s models are also design to show maximum value rather than average price, so they move the market, rather than just reporting on it.

I believe that the matter of their defense is irrelevant. The truth is that real people were harmed by this, and they deserve reparations today. As to who pays, it must be the landlords. This is the supposed 'risk' they take on by being landlords, which everyone tells me is so great to bear.

Also to get on a soap-box, this is the truth of reparations, it is not in relation to a single event, it is an attempt to solve injustices that exist institutionally in our world today.

This approach is at odds with rule of law and historically has not redressed injustices but rather created societies where power is even more concentrated and even less accountable.

The primary purpose of any and all reparations rhetoric in the US today is to divide the electorate by anything other than economic position in order to maintain a status quo whose legitimacy is beginning to erode. And it's working quite well, since you're delivering grandiose proclamations while advocating for nihilism and ignorance towards the existing legal processes that will actually impact the lives of millions of people in the coming years.

I agree that contemporary rhetoric on reparations is quite poor. But, scholars today agree that reparations are a way of understanding our government's position on change and not on giving money to people (Reconsidering Reparations by Olufemi Taiwo is about this). You give some good stuff to think about with the historical point, but I still believe it must be tried again, and better this time.

So I don't discount the legal processes, I am saying they must be changed. That is how we can actually solve issues like this, instead of simply putting a band-aid on each time we have systemic issues like this.

I find myself to be an anti-nihilist as a matter of fact. Reparations is not an _ideal_ for which I have grounded in nothingness (nihilism). Reparations must be a state of being for our government, whose material being should be solving injustice and not propagating it.

Anyone who wants to change the legal system to deliver a specific outcome instead of follow a specific process is always going to be my enemy.

I would be happy to die for habeas corpus, the right to face your accuser, the right to a trial by jury, freedom from ex post facto expropriation, public trials, the right of appeal, and countless other things which literal wars were fought over for a good 700 years of hammering out common law.

To be ignorant of the protections this brings and the costs its absence imposes is legal nihilism, the focus on a single outcome in the present with no provision for the future.

I hope the prosecutor makes their case well and the jury follows the judge’s instructions and returns a verdict favorable to tenants. But if the prosecutor drops the ball or the jury makes a decision that baffles me, upholding that process is more important to justice than any single outcome.

Many Americans are not only willing to die to uphold this, but part of their job is also to kill in its defense. The pseudo-heidigerian stuff about government having a state of being just reads like you’re gearing yourself up to rationalize imposing your beliefs through nominative positioning.

divide the electorate by anything other than economic position

Punishing landlords for colluding against tenants by forcing them to give back the money is pretty much the opposite of the status quo and about as focused on pure economics as you can get.

I would disagree in very strong terms. The entire economic, legal, and taxation system of the US are organized in a certain way that's only a couple of hundred years old.

Returning some money to some tenants as a one-off and restricting some forms of landlord collusion is about as far as you can get from pure economics or structural reform. Both capital R reparations and reparations as a social justice hobby horse are ultimately intended to preserve and legitimize the existing system, even in their maximalist demands which tend to deflect and discredit more concrete advocacy.

Economics is a vast field with a long history and many possible futures so it's quite sad that the horizon for many people is "american neoliberalism with more regulation and redistribution" or "american neoliberalism with less regulation and redistribution."

I can think of at least three actual opposites of the status quo: one would be a georgist tax that makes holding land speculatively unprofitable, one would be a singapore style nationalization where the government purchases all of the apartment buildings at their tax-assessed rate but allows for a market in 99 year leases, and still a third would be ex post facto arbitrary expropriation without compensation in the style of many communist revolutions.

"Some landlords return .01% to 15% of their last 2-3 years of passive revenue increases and promise to raise rents more arbitrarily" is not a bad thing for those renters, but in terms of economic trends and policy it's quite literally using existing law to _return_ to the status quo.

This is a good example of why most people don’t belong in politics or management.

You’re basically saying that because this violates your code of ethics, it should be punished by the legal system wherever or not they’ve actually broken a law. So the system of laws is meaningless, what’s important is how you feel, and your moral code.

And I get it, we probably all feel this way on some level. But I’m glad society doesn’t operate that way.

Today, we punish people by taking away their money. Taking away someones money should not doom people to poverty over this kind of stuff! I am not saying kill all landlords here. I am saying that the landlords profited too much and it must be made fair.

There should be no 'punishment' of the landlords truly, I am saying we make a system where landlords can not unjustly profit from us (and I do speak generally here).

Stuff like this is what causes the housing crisis, it must be dealt with systemically, not by giving a few people none-the-wiser a lesser life.

> I am saying that the landlords profited too much and it must be made fair.

There's for better or worse no law against 'too much profit' in the general case. How would one define 'too much'? A certain margin? That has historically led to merchants increasing their costs so they can profit more in absolute terms once the relative profit cap is met.

Seems like the answer is just to allow more construction and densification, which in turn creates a more competitive market for housing. If they then tried to aggregate, roll-up and collude they would fall under the Sherman act no?

Well the problem is that with these software systems, we have already answered your question. If we do not change something (after seeing this!) then we have allowed 'dumb' collusion. Where these landlords can profit exceedingly and then claim complete innocence.

The landlords see their rent prices increase in their checks each month, it is not as if they have not noticed increased profit over the last years due to this.

So if this is allowed, we will start to see increased centralization and then passive acquiescence to gross profit.

> Where these landlords can profit exceedingly and then claim complete innocence.

Define 'exceedingly.'

> So if this is allowed, we will start to see increased centralization and then passive acquiescence to gross profit.

The market is already fairly efficient, except where laws like rent control forbid market efficiency.

The issue is that while demand exceeds supply of housing in metro areas, the cost to acquire/rent will tend towards the maximum amount a renter/buyer can bear. On the other hand, when supply exceeds demand, it tends towards the cost of construction.

This software just makes the market more efficient in the same direction it was already heading.

More houses solves this. Suing the pricing tool for existing does not.

To define exceedingly. Well I guess I just see this as a natural partner in the housing crisis. To combat things like this is to help solve the housing problem today. The prices are not going up like this because there are too many people, the prices are going up because of economic centralization.

> The prices are not going up like this because there are too many people, the prices are going up because of economic centralization.

Well no, they're going up because there's not enough houses near the jobs. Studies show the US is short 2-6,000,000 homes. Until that changes, prices will only keep going up. The centralization here is making it move faster than it otherwise would but the bounds and direction remain unchanged.

Well if you believe that the problem is that there are not enough houses, these people did not collude, and nothing needs to change. That make sense.

I s'pose we'll find out as this makes its way through the courts :)

> The market is already fairly efficient

Please translate "fairly efficient" into percentage terms. Also, what instrument are you using to perform your measurements?

Oh please, you're ignoring contrary evidence, like the fact that landlords were using the existence of new housing as a justification for raising their own prices in order to stay 'competitive' (in terms of profit, rather than in terms of price). There's a simple and easily understood argument about why the behavior is illegal and anticompetitive.

Coming in and harassing people for definitions and quoting economics 101 while ignoring the empirical evidence isn't a good way to discuss an issue.

> Seems like the answer is just to allow more construction and densification

The system very often doesn't actually support that in fact, so I don't find it a particularly compelling argument.

Sometimes systems suck from the get go, sometimes they degrade over time. Some of us are getting tired of the heads I win tails you lose "democracy" magic show, and the runtime we are in supports recourse outside of the "agreed upon" (wink wink) legal conventions, and I suspect it is more of a coordination problem than a consensus or will problem.

This software is collusion, and anyone using it today should be penalized. I don’t care what excuse they have, it’s clear to someone with half a brain (most landlords have at least half) should realize software that fixes prices for you based on local demand is going to be collusion. It’s pretty clear how that stuff works, the only unclear thing is if there is a loophole or judge which will let the landlords off in favor of the zombie economy over actual humans.

The collusion here is what, that they all agreed to use the same software?

What if I create software that recommends rates to charge, and I market it. Proven to get you up to 20% or more extra rental income! Then everyone just happens to use my software, and the rates are then 'recommended' to everyone based on an analysis of what the market will bear. No collusion. Is a law broken in this case? Or is the market just lacking in competition.

The software isn't making landlords do anything, it's recommending an optimal market price. Is it any different than a quote from a commodities futures exchange being used to price corn at the local grocery store?

The whole point of pro-competition laws is to stop large corporations or a cartel from using market power to control pricing, which is the scheme you just laid out. So, yes, that would be illegal. You can say "no collusion", but you (the operator) have effectively organized a cartel. Each individual landlord may escape liability, but you will not.

Commodities exchanges (I believe) work on a competitive bidding system, which is basically the opposite - you have willing buyers and sellers with roughly equal power/information.

> The whole point of pro-competition laws is to stop large corporations or a cartel from using market power to control pricing, which is the scheme you just laid out. So, yes, that would be illegal.

How is a Zestimate or Redfin home value estimate legal then? Or a Redfin rental estimate? [1] Would it become illegal - or a cartel - if too many people started using it to set rents?

Should we forbid tools to help landlords figure out how much their places should rent for?

[1] https://www.redfin.com/rental-estimate

Yes, if it causes harm to people. Being a landlord is a job (so I'm told), do some math, figure out how much is fair (cost:labor calculation) then ask on the open market if people want to pay that. The problem is that the underlying system here did NOT do this calculation, hence price-gouging. It is the lack of free market that is the problem, thanks to this price centralization.

It might be. RealPage's definitely is because they've clearly accrued market power in order to control pricing. In Redfin's case it seems like more of a marketing gimmick, but if you could prove it had a meaningful effect on driving prices up, then yes, the FTC should order its' removal.

> Should we forbid tools to help landlords figure out how much their places should rent for?

It depends? Playing moneyball (i.e. charging the maximum the market will bear without a serious, violent response) with a necessity like rent should be illegal, and many of these tools seem designed to do that using market power, which is explicitly illegal. If the tool just gave some local averages based on things like amenities, that might be ok.

Then everyone just happens to use my software

knowing what it does, yes that is collusion. Look at the etymology of the word: it literally means 'playing together'. It doesn't require people to meet up in a smoke filled room in supervillain outfits and say 'let's collude, heh heh heh'. Everyone is sharing their rental data to help the software calculate the optimal price, and everyone wants to get extra rental income, per your scenario. The diffrence from the commodity exchange is that exchange operators are not promising specific price outcomes for commodities.

It’s not collusion if the landlords don’t know it is price fixing and they really may not. Collusion definitely requires mens rea.

Collusion requires intent to collude. If they knew using the software was collusion and willingly used it, then only it is collusion.

It does operate that way, whether you want to believe it or not. Every political decision is influenced or directly related to the ideology of those in power.

Funny how feelings are brought up and mocked when it’s about the disenfranchised. Meanwhile, the ruling elite gets their fee fees hurt by socialists and it’s how it should be.

Strange, isn’t it?

Reparations is an ugly box nationally and globally.

Remember, every major group had injustices committed against them at one point and by them at one point.

It’s also just impossible. To pay an amount that even meaningfully improved the lives of 10% of the people it was aimed at, we’d bankrupt ourselves. If your government printed enough money to give let’s say 12% of the population an amount to make up for lost income over several generations, it probably wouldn’t help much, and even if it did, that money would be worthless due to hyperinflation and government bankruptcy.

It’s a well-meaning idea that’s proven stupid by even elementary school math. Anyone who suggests it is clearly incapable of rational though.

I am not saying the solution here is by giving people dollars. But creating a system where landlords (by disallowing this kind of price centralization) can't screw over their tenants.

And saying that people who argue for reparations are incapable of rational thought is quite rude.

What does landlord collusion have to do with reparations?

Have you tried reading the subthread you're posting in?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38297746

Have you tried looking up who I posed the question to?

I didn't have to, because I paid attention the first time. You should try it instead of clapping back.

I'm using reparations as a general term of making people whole. The landlords, whether or not they did anything morally wrong, have taken what they should not have (collusion). Therefore, reparations are called for. This is the argument I am making, predicated on the Justice Department's agreement of the complaint given leading to this case.

You may be right that it’s rude, I apologize. But it’s not incorrect if we’re talking about reparations the way, it is typically used in American discourse, but perhaps you meant it some other way also

Reparations in the context of this antitrust lawsuit == a settlement of the class action lawsuits that will inevitably happen. Same word, but nothing to do with other the other kind.

People like you are why frivolous lawsuits like this exist, because they simply feel that "harm" occurred because something you they didn't like happened.

My argument is that if harm can be proved, those harmed must be made whole. I don't understand how that is frivolous. I am not the one saying that a collusion suit should move forward here.

> If a bunch of firms use the same software to set prices but do so independently and without any attempt to coordinate with each other… that’s a pretty decent defense?

The software enabled coordination without rental management companies/owners needing to put in effort to do so. In the end all they cared about was maxamizing profits which in itself isn't illegal no matter how unethical it might be. The key here is proving that they knew what was going on. I'm sure they did all things considered. It's been going on for years.

If prices went up and occupancy went down, it would be difficult to claim otherwise. Why let units sit empty?

The argument here (not saying I agree with it) is that it's common to let units sit empty over particular periods, based on other business decisions and an understanding of the market.

eg, If you have a lease that ends in September, the make ready process takes 2-4 weeks, so the unit will be available for lease again in October. There's not a high churn of residents in October-December due to holiday periods, etc. and demand doesn't pick up again until January. Therefore, it's better for you to let that unit sit empty now, because demand is so much lower for the next 2-3 months you won't be able to get the same increase in lease price as you will when demand skyrockets in January.

Another example is an understanding that some kind of amenity will change over a period. eg, a new public transport route is going in, or the property next door is being rezoned and demolished, from an industrial site to a commercial precinct, and so waiting for that to happen means that you can get a higher price on your lease once that happens, to the extent that it will offset the loss from leaving the unit vacant.

The defendants will argue that the analysis provided by the plaintiff doesn't consider these kinds of business decisions and that this part of the argument should be considered flawed.

Vacancy rates nationwide are near all time lows. I’d need more evidence to accept that occupancy went down or landlords left units empty.

Haha, that's such an easy way to get around this thing. I'd just set up an LLC called "Price Advisor LLC" and instead of a cartel, we'd all just go to Price Advisor LLC and ask "what should I set it at?" and then Price Advisor LLC can just run the cartel. This is hilarious. I can enable full anti-trust myself out of a one-man LLC by just "using comparables".

Isn’t this what happens every trading day for Apple stock (and others)?

I couldn’t begin to hazard a guess as to what a share of Apple “should be” worth, but if I do a little electronic research, I now have the advice that “around $190/share” is probably right.

Did I collude just there?

there is a difference between doing research when selling vs. asking a company for advice and being required to take their price at least 80% of the time.

there is also the issue of market concentration. generally speaking in a regular, healthy market many people hold stock and possibly undercut each other. In financial cases where there is actual price fixing going on (e.g. LIBOR) there has been a lot of prosecution.

The research you do in that scenario would just tell you the prices which shares had actually changed hands at. A decentralized market-based price discovery mechanism cannot be considered collusion or price fixing, since it’s exactly the opposite.

No, because it's decentralized. The Price Advisor LLC is sort of important there.

e.g. take a cartel that you genuinely think is a cartel. Now instead of them all colluding, imagine that they set up Price Advisor LLC, and that no two of them ever talk to each other to set prices. All price setting is done by Price Advisor LLC. Moving the price setting into this LLC does not make the operation not a cartel. The LLC saying it's "checking comparables" does not make it not a cartel. After all, if a legitimate cartel could dodge this by just making a new LLC, then it would almost always make sense to cartelize because you can always act as a cartel without being considered a cartel for the cost of $500.

Cartels don’t work without an enforcement mechanism to punish defectors. Otherwise you’d be crazy not to lower your rents by 10% and make it up on volume.

This is obviously true in many markets where price discovery is easier: Mobile network operators don’t need a service to report on their competitors’ pricing. They know it and somehow a cartel fails to form.

You can't make it up on volume, your product isn't elastic enough. There's only so many properties that you can own, and financing right now for both construction and acquisition is incredibly difficult. The only viable way for property managers to grow at the moment is to increase their margins for the same product, which as you're likely aware, means either decreasing their costs or increasing their prices. They are doing both.

If they’re not withholding supply they’re not colluding. They’re just charging the market price. Cartels only work if they’re able to lower supply.

They can lower supply by leaving units empty.

are they?

Yes they are, it's common in the industry. Source: I work for a RealPage competitor.

It's not easy because it would never work. Landlords would be incentivised to lower their rent below the cartel level to achieve 100% occupancy. Cartels need an enforcement mechanism to work.

Landlords don't care about 100% occupancy if they are making sufficient profit per unit; the rent isn't constrained to some fixed premium over the mortgage & tax costs. They can just leave some construction material in the empty units and make up some expenses. Have you never dealt with a landlord that invented BS reasons not to return a deposit?

Is there any evidence that real page lowered occupancy rates?

So my partner is in hr for a large firm. There was 3 day event last year where a bunch of her and peer companies got together with a middle person to “level set” and share aggregate salary data.

The entire point of the event was to ensure incoming data to the salary aggregation company was sound.

They wait 2-4 months for a report / dstabase and they can now lookup industry salary by level and function. Its super accurate because they all go together beforehand to ensure that!

Id be shocked if the same thing wasnt happening here. No need to collude / conspire on actual offers when you already have super accurate aggregate pricing information, you already know what your competitors are going to be asking for like properties, price a little up or down.

This kind of “price discovery” (for labor in this case) is perfectly legal. Plenty of markets have “liquid” pricing and don’t need vendors to provide discovery, yet corresponding cartels don’t emerge on this fact alone.

What made a difference in cases like the Silicon Valley anti-poaching regime was direct anti-competitive action: Hiring away Apple Engineer A would be good for me, but I won’t because I’ll get an angry phone call from Steve Jobs and face potential retribution.

The crux of a case like this is whether RealPage was merely facilitating market-making price discovery (good all on its own for maximizing landlord profits—legally!) or was explicitly or implicitly creating incentives for landlords to act against their individual interest in favor of the collective interest.

> The question is whether it is actually illegal under the law...

This has become a painfully, utterly common trope on Hacker News.

The Sherman Anti-Trust act is one paragraph long.

It doesn't attract the same spirited interest from judges as the constitutional amendments do, which are even shorter. Judges and Justices have been writing the law on those for a long, long time, including reversing their own precedents, "ignoring" case law - really just fucking disagreeing with the past. To hell with case law.

> underlying behavior seems really objectionable and should be illegal

This is what matters. At the end of the day, if the government wants to win these cases, it's not going to be by making RealPage look bad - one kind of tomfoolery - or by stare decisis - another kind of tomfoolery. Judges and Justices are writing anti-trust law.

So give them some good fucking propaganda. Make them give a single utter fuck about something as utterly god damned dull as this. Align it with their political opinions, because that is what decides these cases.

The same thing is true about the Google case. The FTC doesn't even care about advertising. The DoJ doesn't care about apartment pricing. The underlying problem is that the people litigating this have no passion about the thing whatsoever, they are way too big picture "company bad" and don't have much else to go on.

Yes, there is no such thing, philosophically speaking, as "actually illegal". The law is not a platonic ideal, it's constructed in every court ruling.

If you actually applied the laws as written, it would be about a million times stricter than what we actually enforce.

These things are explicitly listed as illegal:

* conspiring in restraint of trade

* price discrimination between different purchasers if such a discrimination substantially lessens competition

* sales on the condition that the buyer or lessee not deal with the competitors of the seller or lessor

* mergers and acquisitions where the effect may substantially lessen competition

What a puerile defense. The medium of collusion is irrelevant to the intent of the laws, as is its novelty.

The landlords were clearly communicating pricing information to one another with the intent of profit maximization. I don't see how software mediation changes that.

What you just said is 100% legal, and occurs in every market. What makes it collusion is if they come to agreements about pricing information.

IANAL, and perhaps you are but I don’t believe it is 100% legal. Seems like a matter of degree. What the parent is describing could reasonably be construed as illegal signaling and/or pricing collusion if the market is itself the mechanism for collusion. There will be some interesting internal emails.

Good overview of signaling here - https://www.jonesday.com/-/media/files/publications/2016/09/...

I can go to a variety of hotel/airline/retail/stock brokers/etc websites right now and get prices. Why would that be illegal?

Doing it secretly would invite scrutiny and reason to issue subpoenas though.

It wouldn’t be. Using a tool as a collusive mechanism to set prices jointly or create a price floor would be though.

So if these landlords all got together every Monday and discussed detailed pricing / sales info that would be 100% legal?

What would be the purpose of this meeting other than to make implicit pricing agreements?

Does anti-trust law explicitly require a written / verbal agreement or does doing lots of things that looks like agreeing (without actually agreeing) count?

Talking about pricing is fine.

Not fine: “I’ll set my price to $X if you do as well.”

The hard cases arise when this communication is obscured or implicit.

Saying “I’m charging this much because it’s the most anyone will pay so skip the work of figuring out pricing and just charge the same” is legal. “We agree to never charge less than $x” is not. The question is if realpage lead to landlords keeping units vacant when they couldn’t rent them for the realpage suggested price.

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