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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

It is not price fixing, it is price finding. There is nothing wrong with a market maker existing. There is good evidence that markets with higher penetration of this software respond more quickly to declining markets than do other markets with disorganized lessors who maintain the "pretend and extend" strategy to rent setting.

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Demand for a roof over one's head is inelastic. Markets do not work for inelastic goods. These people can't just downsize; renting is the low end of housing, and the low end is being systematically crushed by the landed aristocracy, abetted by automated price collusion.

> Demand for a roof over one's head is inelastic.

Quite the contrary. In my younger days, I could not afford an apartment. So what did I do? I got together with a friend who could not afford an apartment, either, and we shared an apartment.

I've also rented a house with multiple roommates to bring the cost down.

This probably varies regionally, but in my experience it's become pretty common for landlords and even HOAs to prohibit roommates (other than family members) these days. A handful of municipalities have even put it into law for single-family zoning. I gather it's considered to be a marker of "troublesome" people.

I know people with roommates in apartments today.

The type of roofs over one's head is hugely elastic. At low cost there is shared rental housing far from where someone might find ideal. At high cost you can build a custom stand-alone structure made of the finest materials on an acre of land.

It very well could be price fixing based on much of what has been talked about over the last several months about this. If RealPages is managing all of these prices for properties in a given area they are in a position to inflate prices gradually over a period of time.

It is a natural feedback loop of an algorithm like this. If it is designed to look at the properties around your location, and you try to get the most money for your property, over time those prices will go up as the algorithm tests what people are willing to pay for a given unit/building/location.

You could argue that this may have already happened with humans, but at a different pace and the algorithm is literally feeding its own inflated prices into itself.

Let's also not ignore that we are talking about housing here, there is a strong ethical side to not trying to price people out of places to live.

From the article,

In fact, the lawsuits claim that RealPage shares "peer lists" with clients that tell them exactly who else is providing data to the company within a specific distance of their property.

This sounds like reassurance to a landlord that peers will mimic the same price moves. If true, I would call that price fixing.

You are hereby reminded that litigants can claim anything they want in a brief. The bar for sanctioning a party over unfounded claims is extremely high.

Another kind of marketplace that provides detailed information on the other bids and asks is ... every functioning marketplace you have ever heard of. Commodities, stocks, futures, farm produce, everything.

In all of those markets, both buyers and sellers have access to the asks and bids. For your analogy to hold, I think the market data needs to be freely available.

Does RealPage give this info freely to renters, or is it hidden behind a subscription or fee and meant for landlords only?

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