>Unfettered markets create monopoloies and oligopolies.
Rental markets aren't "monopoloies" or "oligopolies" by any stretch of the imagination.
Rental markets aren't "monopoloies" or "oligopolies" by any stretch of the imagination.
I do think there are far too many players involved for it to fit the reasonable description of an oligopoly. (I am not the upthread objector to the use of that word, though I think the objection is valid.)
The hair splitting meme around "monopoly" and effective monopoly power (and the common meaning of these terms) is just ugly.
You conveniently left out the part before: "at least 21 large landlords and institutional investors [...]". Wikipedia says the definition of oligopoly is:
"An oligopoly (from Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few', and πωλέω (pōléō) 'to sell') is a market in which control over an industry lies in the hands of a few large sellers who own a dominant share of the market."
"at least 21" is not "a few" by any stretch of the imagination.
As far as the rental.market being an oligopoly, there's an argument to be made that the existence of things like RealPage makes large sections of the market act as it would with an oligopoly, even if it doesn't quite meet the definition.
That is an interesting conversation to have, separate from the illegal price fixing.
They’re also a necessary expense. It is the last thing a person can choose not to spend money on.
So what we have now is a whole bunch of landlords who largely all use the same software. That doesn't sound illegal. Now if it happens to spit out the same results for all the users, that's one thing (and problematic all on it's own). But the allegation here is that landlords bought into and use the software knowing this would be the outcome.
This is just an evolution of the old cartel of 10 or so CEOs scheming to fix prices in a dark cigar-filled room except now companies attempt to remove their own responsibility by waving their hands at The Algorithm [tm].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....