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Comment by ethagknight | Hacker News Reader

Realpage is just a tool, and the landlord can use it different ways. We use it to help us optimize for occupancy so that we dont have units sitting vacant, AND so we can better manage our vacancy over slow periods. It is downright magical at times how it has seemed to predict softening market conditions when I thought the software was simply recommending discounts left and right

An owner choosing to let a unit sit vacant for an extended period is probably more worried about "tenants rights" (squatters) and how difficult it is to evict. You can't blame software if an owners chooses to destroy his real avg rents by letting units sit vacant longer than necessary. 3 months of vacancy to score a 1 year lease, but the opex bills keep coming... no thanks.

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Collusion is just a tool, an illegal one, but a tool nonetheless. You say RealPage is magical, I think it’s just evidence of its control over the housing market, not clairvoyance. It self-fulfills whatever prophecy it comes up with. And these prophecies seem to always predict ever increasing prices(excluding high frequency noise), far above what the market would normally allow.

Renting is supposed to have risks, without these risks it probably wouldn’t even be allowed in modern society. Landlords are well within their right to find creative ways to mitigate them, but it can’t involve breaking the very same set of societal rules their tenants are following, there is nothing creative about that. If only criminals targeted criminals, but they always go after the easiest victims.

Serious question… is the stock market collusion? Sellers looking at each others work, agreeing on a price?

There’s a very healthy, active and open market for apartment rents in most cities. If you are posting from somewhere with heavy rent controls, government market manipulation, or extreme demand, blame those instead! it’s still a market.

I’m not excusing bad actors, but real page is not a scapegoat

Can you predict the stock market?

Just like the rent-market can have price manipulation, so can the stock-market and any other market. It’s absolutely possible for a trading platform to do this through price recommendations, and it would be illegal.

The two things being compared here are completely different though. It’s not very useful. Whats the real-life stock equivalent to RealPage? Who even rents stocks?

Additionally RealPage is forceful with its price “recommendations”. Imagine if a trading platform forced you to buy/sell a certain percentage of your stocks at their suggested rate, and file an appeal to opt out.

> It is downright magical at times how it has seemed to predict softening market conditions

It's not magically predicting. It's called colluding. And yes colluding is very effective and profitable for the colluder - even if the collusion is being laundered through a program.

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