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Comment by ajhurliman | Hacker News Reader

This blows my mind that they're actually pursuing this, the two complaints are that they schemed to decrease competition among landlords and that they monopolized commercial revenue management software. Both are completely bogus.

You could say the entire profession of appraising real estate prices "decreases competition" if the first complaint is valid.

And they certainly haven't monopolized the software space, I'd never even heard of RealPage until the lawsuit, I used Rentometer. There are dozens more, predicting rent prices is hardly a novel idea.

I think that was like one of the toy problems in Andrew Ng's online ML course.

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It’s amazing your confidence when it sounds like you don’t even participate in the top N landlord space for a given market.

IIRC it has already been demonstrated that RealPage had the lion shares of the total units in certain markets.

The question is not about rent predictions but having asymmetric information that allows users of the site to effectively participate as a cartel. I am a big proponent of free markets but I think this is a worthy question to answer. When your algorithm controls more than 50% of pricing in a market does that count as collusion and how do you handle it. It seems like it might effectively eliminate the market price as you the dominant player are setting it.

It might get thrown out but I believe it’s naive and brash to just dismiss it so easily.

dismissive and slightly insulting replies to concerns about price are daily business

I'm glad these questions are being raised and bringing more awareness. I always suspected there was something that was going on to artificially raise rent prices. It sounds like collusion to me.

"Price fixing by algorithm is still price fixing," regardless of fanciness or cleverness.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fix...

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/YardiSOI-filed%...

I wouldn't be happy either if I was a landlord.

But the landlord-ing business is a tough business, and business is about to get tougher.

If you think being in the landlord is tough, try getting a job.

I mean seriously, being a landlord is just owning something. At best, you do the work of a handyman, and get paid orders of magnitude more for that work. And if you're the average landlord, a handyman does a lot more work and does a better job because they actually have to compete. Being a landlord isn't hard, it's absurdly easy compared to the income it yields.

If you're the average landlord, you hire people to maintain the building and deal with the tenants. Rich people constantly try to convince everyone that owning things is a job. If buying a business forces you to work operating it, it's because you couldn't afford the business outright, so instead you're paying it off with sweat equity.

Certainly nothing wrong with buying a job, it's positively Jeffersonian, but the reason you're working there is because you couldn't afford anyone else.

Being a landlord is just feudalism. Most of the terminology is still the same.

I think being a landlord is pretty much the easiest business ever. As compared to real businesses, who really produce products and really participate in competitive markets.

Landlord is about luck of the tenants. A bad tenant will destroy your property costing you a lot of money. A bad tenant will not pay thus forcing you to have your property earning nothing for months until you can legally evict them. If you don't have enough tenants you lose money because you still have to pay your costs (the bank for your loan, maintenance...).

You can make a lot of money but it isn't easy money. (particularly in the early years, once you have the property paid for it is much easier)

Easy, you outsource your tenant management to a company that does that sort of thing. There's many highly reliable methods to get good tenants. Outsourcing to a company that specializes in that works because you're already making free money by being a landlord, so now you just make less free money.

None of them are taking on the risk of what the tenant isn't paying or you don't have one. Landlord also isn't free money. You have a lot of bills to pay.

You have negative bills to pay, because you get money purely by virtue of having those bills.

Landlord is not a job, it's a state of ownership. Owning a company is not a job either. Being a CEO is! And you can be both. But simply owning something is not a job.

You can say property management is hard, and maybe it is. That's a separate thing and the VAST majority of landlords actually don't manage their property. So being a landlord is very, very easy.

Then you wont make any money

How long have you been a landlord? If it's so easy, everyone would do it.

People don’t refrain from being landlords because it’s hard. I’ve seen people being landlords up close, it’s not. No, people refrain from being landlords because it’s so incredibly expensive to get started. Especially at a time where people are struggling to pay their own damned rent or mortgage, the cost of a second property is completely out of the question.

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