Canadian mega landlord using AI 'pricing scheme' as it hikes rents
breachmedia.ca
breachmedia.ca
Like generative AI for art, it doesn’t cleanly fit into any existing governance. I would assume new, and irritating complex, laws will be attempted to be written to control this development as it has more immediate real works impact than other forms of “AI”.
We need tools that arent making choices based on profit increase but humanitarian necessity (which is probably impossible)
Tools such as :
- finding people to share mortgages with, negotiating problems encountered with roomates, ways to re-shuffle roomates around to find better compatibility, incentives for being less of a dick and contributing to happier roomatism
- collective action in an area such as purchasing cheap out of town space with lots of living area and "roughing it" for a while to put downward pressure on rent prices, maybe even negotiating particular prices to trigger a large number of renter signups ( no way this is legal, but it will get bad enough we are going to have to break some rules)
- shared mortgage investment that is based upon agreed lower reasonable profit, or even money parking, instead of maximizing real estate profit (there has to be some philanthropes who would put there money into this?)
- I hate to have to mention negative landlord tracking, but the worst of the worst gets away with so much shit, we need to come up as close to vigilantism we can get while not breaking laws. I foresee the need for tools where we can track exact letter of law harassment limits etc for the worst offenders who are getting away with too much uncaught illegal and immoral landlording
Having a public option for housing could go a long way towards keeping a middle class.
The coops keep their rents below that of the competition to attract new members, and can even reduce the rents after the initial outlay has been payed off.
This would then create a number of large semi-altruistic competitors that would throw sand into the capitalistic machine and inhibit price gouging.
https://archive.is/20240131194845/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
But I completely agree with you, a lot of the tech has been hugely detrimental to the public. And the government do no oversight.
In most markets, comparative pricing of other vendors is always a solid baseline for where to start pricing your product. Market intelligence is a critical part of any go to market strategy.
Edit: Just to be clear, I think market collusion is anti-competitive. But where is the dividing line between market research and collusion? Clearly if landlords met in the back of a smoky bar the last sunday of every month to set rents - we'd call that collusion. But is such formal data sharing and price setting actually required to achieve the same effect - practically, landlords could just observe each other's rents to achieve a similar effect. Where should the law decide it is collusion?
Scale and ubiquity make all the difference in the world even if it seems like the same public data.
An example that comes to mind, different topic but somewhat analogous: cameras recording activity in public spaces. Some people argue there is nothing different happening today from decades ago because if you are doing activities in a public space anyone could record you just fine whether 50 years ago or today.
But they are wrong, it is vastly different. Fifty years ago someone could record you in that public space, but the odds were infinitesimally small that someone actually did. And if they did, the odds of anyone else finding that video were smaller yet. Today with ubiquitous cameras everywhere recording everything all the time it's a near certainty that you are being recorded in public spaces. And with all that video going into "the cloud" and usually available to every government agency, it's all analyzed and indexed and thus searchable at a scale never before imaginable.
Long-winded example to show that scale makes all the difference even if the underlying action is the same. Sure, some landlords have colluded with some others for centuries, but the ability for all of them to collude on every property real-time is a fundamental shift.
You can hire people to scrape the Internet for artwork and then produce images in arbitrary styles (same for text), but you would need to constantly pay them wages (benefitting their lives, reducing unemployment, injecting money into the economy) and you can only do so much. If they become good enough they will just quit and live off freelance commissions.
Similarly, if you hire low-paid people to canvas the city for rent prices, and yet more people to aggregate them without any ML, chances are one of them is renting and will raise the question with the authorities, and also why not just drop off to start own real estate agency with all that data.
If rents are paid no matter what, you dont need AI to tell you to set it high.
But we know rents arent limitless because ability to pay is not limitless.
It says it right in the article's subtitle:
>Software the U.S. government says is illegal gives landlords ability to coordinate rent hikes.
The AI (in this instance "AI" just means "a blackbox algorithm") is basically an excuse to provide plausible deniability on market collusion. Combine this with the relatively inelastic nature of the demand for housing, it creates an avenue for abuse. Without the AI, you don't have collusion meaning increased competition will produce a lower and fairer market price.
If rents are inelastic, you dont need collusion? You just charge as much as you want?
Ahhh, ok, so why wouldn't this happen even with AI?
Isn't the population of landlord's heterogenous? Some landlord's are happy to leave their units empty for a year, while others don't want to leave it empty between tenants?
So in that case, even with collusion, you'd have some landlord's undercutting other landlords?
Its also accurate that social pressure on the landlord has always been an option, as opposed to disdain of the nomadic people that are interested in paying the given hiked rate
Even a perfectly inelastic (vertical) demand curve still intersects the supply curve at some price.
In other words, even if I would pay infinite dollars for a widget, I would still purchase from the cheapest supplier.
You could probably just have software without any AI that says to everyone who uses it "raise prices by 10% this month" and then everyone does it.
Maybe that's all it does anyway, who knows.
I think the real problem is that it constitutes a cartel.
You’re mischaracterizing the problem. It’s not that shelter is a basic need that can’t be fulfilled at any other apartment building. It’s that a 14-month lease with a 10k lease break penalty will readily ruin anyone’s life on the spot. Paying 50% more for month-to-month isn’t feasible for anyone either.
There are also people who can move to other locations.
If rents are up, you need more houses, it's really not that complicated.
The supply side has been imploded by government decree, leading inexorably to the current debacle. I personally know several builders closing down their businesses. Not for lack of demand, of course, but because construction has been made impossible by vacant-eyed bureaucrats.
Dear central planners and jr. totalitarians:
This self-imposed disaster won’t cease until you decide it’s time for it to be over. Or, keep voting as you have - your choice. You do you.
It’s great for banks and financial institutions and their investors to keep housing prices going up.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/15/federal-and-st...
I see nothing wrong with this market at all. The reality is that there’s plenty of people willing to live in these apartments, often splitting the rent with roommates. The more people that do that, the more the rent goes up because now it’s acceptable to have two or even three incomes paying what used to be the rent for a one bed room.
The only way for the little guy to win this game is to not play. Screw those overpopulated metros and go live somewhere else.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-real-es...
The median price of a single-family home is C$685k. This is one of the cheapest cities in Ontario.
If I "go live somewhere else", that means moving to Texas where I can triple my take-home pay as a software developer for a significantly lower cost of living.
Labour is not a perfect commodity that can be moved around. Once someone leaves Canada, they're probably not going to cut their earnings by moving back, even if we fix the housing crisis.
This has already happened with AI. Go look at Geoffrey Hinton's students and researchers at the University of Toronto.
That sounds great, to be honest. Why don't you do just that? Sounds like Canada deserves it.
https://x.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062
Anyone who can code is fleeing this country en masse and the government's response is to bring more people in from abroad to address the "skills shortage". This depresses wages further, because the government views us as interchangeable cogs in a machine.
This causes GDP per capita to shrink as we bring in several less-efficient people to do the work of one. GDP per capita has gone from over 90% of the USA in the 80s to 73% now.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-is-no...
I don't believe Canada deserves this. We're a first-world developed country that my ancestors spent centuries building that is actively reducing our living standards so we can compete against WITCH.
I visited the American Jewish History museum in Philadelphia recently, and they had a recreation of a flophouse from the 1920s with a 100 sqft bedroom in which a recent immigrant doing manual labour would live.
My classmates in the 2020s that are immigrants are paying most of their income to split that room in two.
I'd rather go to a museum in my country and tell my kids how much better their lives will be than mine. I want to give back to the community that raised me.
With urbanisation going up to 11 there are not many "somewhere else cheap to live" for many professions. People can't easily find a job at a place with lower rents because there's a reason it has lower rents: it's less desirable, has less opportunities, so on and so forth.
For the privileged class of office workers with remote jobs that's an easy solution, and one that I see many peers taking over time, for the rest of society it's not feasible. If you were a theater actor (or teacher), you can't go live in the middle of nowhere, you won't have many peers, you won't have many venues, companies, etc. to work with. Now apply that logic to many professions who need a community around (of other workers, of companies or customers) to do their work and you will realise that for the vast majority of people it's not feasible to flee expensive urban centres.
I am fairly certain that 15% increase was the automatic recommendation by RealPage.
RealPage would only have an affect on new leases with new apartments.
Your lease does not renew, it automatically goes month to month. They can't cancel a lease, they would need a reason to evict and apply for it at the LTB.
Of course, if your pricing assistant is trained on pricing & occupancy data across all landlords, you and other users are obviously colluding.
Apparently, though, you can successfully pretend you are not colluding. “AI told me to raise prices” and as we observe with copyright laundering so far legal system does not care what AI ingested. Inputs magically disappear into the black box of magic.
Dare not think otherwise lest Nvidia tanks.
A lot of Americans complain how shitty they got it, For Canadians it is like heaven here. You can actually buy a house in a major city and afford nice things and earn a decent salary.
This is not possible in the majority of Canadian cities. Canada is a great place to visit but it is a shitty place to work and live, unless your parents own a house and have a couple of rentals (in Vancouver or Toronto) that you're going to inherit.
Even 100k salary in Toronto is poverty these days, I don't know how people do it anymore. Private industry pays like shit and unless your a Gov Employee it's just tough.
-ExPat...never coming back.....
Can confirm 100k salary in Vancouver is nothing. Even 200k I wasn't saving money.
What makes me angry is learning 1/4 jobs in Canada is a government job. Taxes, housing, society (I don't even feel like I live in Canada sometimes).
I don't know what other options there are. It's quite bleak and living in Canada takes a toll on your mental health.
I envy you...
Not that surprising when you include teachers, doctors, nurses, etc. I imagine the usa would probably be similar to us if they had socialized healthcare.
> Can confirm 100k salary in Vancouver is nothing. Even 200k I wasn't saving money.
That is rediculous. Vancouver is expensive. Its not so expensive that you cannot afford to live there on 200k.
> Taxes
Highest marginal tax rate in california is 49% vs 53% in BC. That is a bit higher, but its not like the difference is that big. Although maybe how it falls out might be worse if you are middle class.
> I apply to American jobs but they minute they find out I am Canadian they will pass on my application even jobs I overqualified for.
I have worked remotely for american companies from canada. Not every company will go for it, but it definitely do-able.
Have you considered we are in a bit of a market downturn right now, and you might still get rejected even if american?
In any case, if you dont like living in canada, why not move? NAFTA makes moving to the usa a hell of a lot easier from canada than it is in most countries.
or the employer is your own startup.
trust me 200k wasnt enough in vancouver downtown (i rent)
However, QC has its own issues, infrastructure and hospital waiting time are pretty bad.
the weather tax too doesn't make sense. extremely cold and hot weather. at least in BC its functional and get little snow.
i donno where to go tbh, hoping to land a remote gig somehow but job market is super tough.
My dream right now is living in East Asia working remotely earning USD. Canada has remained stagnant while that region surpassed it in many areas.
But the best thing is probably a remote job paid in USD. It's possible but relies on a lot of luck and connection. Another thing to consider is working on two remote contractor jobs at the same time -- maximize expense and move to a place that doesn't f**ing rain. MTL has too much rain these two years and I'm afraid it's going to lose its summer charm.
The healthcare situation is also horrendous overall, but if you and your family are currently healthy and you have a good job with good insurance (as software engineers tend to), then the risk to you and yours specifically may be low. If you can afford it, you also have access to higher quality of care than almost anywhere else. If I had a severe disease or got into a bad accident, I would want to be a well-to-do American with good insurance living in a major city.
Have you tested that?
Good family friends had a baby in California. They’re both high level teachers, have been for 15 years at this point. Gets complicated, c section. Less that 10 hours later someone comes to the bedside and says this is costing the insurance company $60k a day and they have to move to a new hospital. Now. In their own car. With no wheelchair. With a 10 hour old baby and a wife that just had a c section.
They have great health insurance, have paid premiums their entire lives. What a scam.
Also, heaven forbid you want to take a year or two off to be with family or write a book or just live.
Also my partner currently has 18 month’s maternity leave, fully paid.
That is a very, very big no thanks.
Just a reminder, 92% of Americans have health insurance. California has universal healthcare, and there are more people in California than in Canada.
[1] https://www.citizen.org/article/medicare-for-all-prevents-me...
[0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadians-moving-to-the-us-...
126,340 Canadians moved to the US out of a population of 38.93 million
0.32% hardly seems like "most people"
There most certainly is regulation, and that's why housing prices are so high. If you got rid of the regulation, builders would build new housing. It's like this all across Western nations now: they can't build new housing in the needed quantity because of zoning regulations.
Note the important point here that these don’t “stop building” but rather simply make it more expensive or more time consuming. Increased time is essentially equivalent to increased cost since you must pay lawyers and employees and so forth as time increases.
- minimum parking requirements
- single family zoning restrictions
- height restrictions
- environmental reviews
- historical preservation review
- local input on many/most decisions
There is a whole universe of stuff written around this topic. You can Google around for it with the topic of “YIMBY” or “housing abundance” or similar.
A good entry point can be: https://new.yimbyaction.org/top-resources/
Also read Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein as they have been harping on about housing abundance for many years.
- Usage Restriction. Seattle is famous for having the highest percentage of land zone exclusively for single family housing. This puts a hard limit to how much can be built.
- Parking Minimum. These can drive construction costs a lot, so much that a lot of projects can't be build profitably.
- Endless "Environmental" review processes. While these do sound good in theory, they have (at least in Seattle) very rarely been used to actually protect the environment. They're typically used by NIMBYs to slow down and delay projects forever so that developers abandon.
There is a lot more, but those are some of the main things people talk about when they point to "zoning regulations".
We still get people being like, "No my neighborhood character is changing!" But thankfully most of them are drowned out by people asking for up zoning and more housing.
It’s caused several builders I know to close their businesses.
Congratulations! Sometimes, evidently, you get what you vote for?
I've even heard people lament saying they miss Chinese international students who would spend a lot of money, creating jobs but these new Indian "students" just show up at food banks taking everything, overcrowding homes, taking advantage of government benefits, jobs meant for new graduates, nepotism, just DDOSing the whole Canadian infrastructure as a whole is the popular opinion.
I don't know what to do about it and neither do the politicians. I'm not exactly thrilled to be importing this many people from India, a country which I frankly don't have any interest or passion for.
Everyday I just long to be away from it all but tough to do that when you rely on payment from one location.
I’m unhappy about it because we need them to immigrate here because we’ve utterly failed to create a thriving, functional, sustainable, balanced economy with people who have legitimate means and incentives to participate in it across the board.
This mass immigration strategy is a lifeline whether we like it or not. It’s not a good situation no matter how you slice it in my opinion, but I suspect things would be worse without immigration.
I recently started a business and I’ve been completely blown away by how much it sucks in this country. The start up costs were reasonable until I discovered my type of business requires light industrial space to get a permit. I can’t get the permit to operate from my residence due to zoning, not because I want a store front or anything, but because I’d need to drain water more often than residential zones are allowed. I mean, someone who has a lot of baths will drain far more water than I’d need to, but whatever. I need to rent the space to operate.
So I look around my city and discover this can cost around $100k per year for remarkably small spaces. Like, barely larger than my 2 car garage. The cheapest I found was $65k for what is essentially the same situation as my garage, but I’d be able to get the permit. It’s dirtier, far away from my home, only has 120V service, no internet, would need serious renovation to be suitable for basic lab work, etc.
I thought I must be missing something and started digging into historical pricing. Around 15 years ago the same place was leased for 3 years at $15k per year.
How are we supposed to build our economy in these conditions? Why would I take on that risk? I don’t want to build the next unicorn here; I just want to tissue culture some plants. I like it. It’s insane to bother doing it legitimately though. What a mess.
Canada is failing to make entrepreneurship appealing or even sensible. Regular employment is becoming less rewarding for most people each year. As a result I think we’ve got a shrinking and relatively unmotivated workforce. Unless that were to change, we absolutely need to import labour to fill the gaps. It’s going to feel strange to live here in 20 years, I think. It won’t be the same. I hope it works out well for the people who are coming here, at least.
I really worry for my kids inheriting the economy and country as I see it, and being wrong could be a good thing.
Canada lowered its student immigration target and then MISSED it [1]. Students in India are acutely aware Canadians don't want them (or more accurately, don't have the infrastructure to handle them). So now a whole generation of potential immigrants have spread the word that Canada is not worth it (and that fire will spread fast).
This plus the standard developed country birth rate (i.e. low) but a lack of adequate infrastructure is now going to push Canada into anemic to negative economic and population growth. Think Japan without the infrastructure.
Unless something is done to turn around this degrowth, and without immigrants to blame this time, Canada has nowhere to go but simply become America's little shrunken brother.
What is actually unpopular to say is that a certain sector of Canadians got annoyed at too many different looking people in their towns and instead of demanding the government build infrastructure and housing, they demanded the government choke growth. And well, they're gonna get what they demanded..
[1]: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202406251...
because its clear that whatever you guys have its working
US has immigration caps per country of origin, unlike Canada.
US has strict entry requirements, unlike Canada.
US has less "free" social programs than Canada.
2. "US has immigration caps per country of origin, unlike Canada":
OTOH, US has almost unlimited illegal immigration unlike Canda.
3. "US has strict entry requirements, unlike Canada."
Have you seen the southern border of the US now? US's unauthorized immigrant population is roughly one-third/fourth of Canadian population.
A census was performed in 2021, but I wouldn't trust its findings to be relevant. It was done in the middle of harsh government-imposed lockdowns and other severe disruptions throughout the whole country. A lot of foreigners who could temporarily leave Canada did so, and many foreign "students" and "temporary workers" delayed their arrivals. There has been a huge influx of foreigners since then, too. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until 2026 for the next census and more recent data.
This also isn't a subject that sees objective study in academic settings, either. I don't think that it would even be possible to study objectively in such a setting, given then the lucrative financial ties between foreign "students" and Canada's universities themselves.
Any researcher daring to even consider the subject in an objective manner would likely face significant persecution from a variety of sources.
For their own personal safety, it's a topic that most Canadians are not willing to openly and honestly discuss with people they don't know and trust, including academics, pollsters, and others engaging in data collection. Expressing the "wrong" opinion can easily result in various types of harassment and abuse, if not worse. The downvoting of deisteve's comment is an example of this in practice.
In private, and when among trusted individuals, Canadians are far more willing to honestly discuss this subject.
You might not want to believe it, but what deisteve expressed is highly relevant.
I mean how hard is it to find some data supporting racist generalizations like this?
If you and deisteve can draw and propagate generalizations like this without data, an unbiased person can also state objectively you and deisteve are bigoted.
Some of the people I've heard from who are most opposed to what's happening are actually Indians who immigrated decades ago, and especially the Canada-born-and-raised descendants of Indians who immigrated in the past.
The first group find themselves once again starting to experience the sort of environment and problems that they intentionally wanted to leave behind.
The second group, especially those in their 20s and 30s, find that their reputations are being tarnished thanks to the negative impacts that unrelated foreigners who happen to have similar appearances and similar names are imposing on Canadian society as a whole.
Also, keep in mind that your false accusations of "racism" and "bigotry" are exactly why so many people in Canada are hesitant to discuss this matter openly and honestly, and why the "data" you claim to want probably don't (and effectively can't) exist.
While some of us are thicker-skinned and have come to expect false allegations like yours, many others just completely avoid the situation by remaining silent and hiding what they're actually thinking, or by giving a "safe" answer that they don't believe. Such people only share their experiences and true thoughts with individuals they've come to trust won't harass them merely for being honest.
struggling with immigration from india is very real in Canada and we can't keep censoring or avoiding it because its uncomfortable
For exactly the reasons you mention. They’ll fit right in.
color of skin isnt the issue, its who contributes to taxes and society in balance so as many surface areas can be served without anyone feeling left out
singapore's multiculturalism works but why doesnt Japan's?
canada is better than most
Modern Canada has not turned a "blind eye". I accept absolutely no blame, none, nada for a single thing any ancestor of mine has done. None. I am not responsible for anything my ancestors have done.
The federal goverments covering multiple parties over the last few decades have poured money into settlements, investigating claims, resolving issues. I agree with settling claims if there was a contract, otherwise not. All over the planet, in every single country that exists, people are on "other people's land". There is not a single place free of this, anywhere. You only need go back far enough to discover "someone else was here".
It should be noted that this also holds true for virtually all natives in Canada today. All took land from prior waves of settlers, and all warred against one another for land and resources. To somehow claim or believe that no war, to strife, to taking of others land occurred before that "horrible horrible white man" showed up is a fist full of lies.
In terms of "atrocities", there has never been "mass graves" found in Canada, ever. Please differentiate between "suspected" and "we've validated that suspicion". It should be noted that for mass graves, there are federal funds given to native communities to investigate any such claims, millions being spent this very moment, yet again -- never, ever been found.
The issues with the church abusing natives in the past is a sad, and indeed horrible event. Yet one must view this in the optics of ALL societies at this time. It was done with an intent to help, not hurt. Again, it was wrong, but the motive was not intended as such.
And to put this in perspective, look at what happened to white Canadian children placed in the care of the church. Ever hear of priests raping young boys? Of orphanages beating young children? This happened to white people as well, and while none of it was right, to native or to white, my point is that it happened to us too.
And if you think that's it, Google the "home children". An example being that my great-great grandfather died during WWI, resulting in his wife and children being without a provider. Mores being as they were back then, this meant the wife had two choices, put the children up for adoption, as they would all starve otherwise, and then remarry -- for no man would take another's children back then.
This is how war heroes were treated in the early 20th. Thanks for your life, your wife and children are now screwed.
Thus my grandfather was eventually shipped out indentured, which is on the edge of slavery, to Canada from the UK. My greatuncle was shipped to Australia. My great-aunts, unknown. To this day we have no idea where our family is in the world, or even if they survived. Some home children were treated atrociously, starving conditions, raped, beat, and more. To run meant the law would catch you and bring you back.
My grandfather was "lucky", in that he was only worked 18 hours a day as a youth, and being a farm he had food. But that farmer bought my grandfather's contract, and had him until 18.
You may say "So what", but my point here is this was the world of the time.
And you may say that Canada is a horrible country, but from my perspective screw you. Look at the world today, where more than 1/2 of it are committing acts that are far, far more barbarous than anything done 100+ years ago in Canada.
And for the last decades we've been working towards resolution.
Canada is not perfect, but it a light of glowing enlightenment compared to the rest of the world.
I'm sure you're going to come back with "But, this happened!" and yes some of it likely did. But is it happening today? Are you seriously trying to claim people aren't aware today? Are you seriously trying to say the billions upon billions spent in the last few decades aren't an attempt to try to fix things?
Canadian government committed atrocities against its people. It will continue doing so, while apologizing and throwing money away.
Modern Canada is no better. Look at what is happening.
Definitely not what the rest of us are discussing.
My point wasn’t to litigate whether everyone’s history includes atrocities. My point is that a government that allowed these things to happen very recently is not the type of government that has the average person (who has as little voice as indigenous people on a reserve) in mind when making policy. Our government is beholden to corporate interests and elites. Not sure why you are defending that.
Yes, but were the acts of that church run school system, the same as the acts exhibited in the 1600s? The 1800s? NO. In fact, there was a realization that the schools had issues, that there was wrongness in the schools, as far back in the 1950s, when legislation was passed to allow natives to attend in the standard school system. The federal government stepped in, and in the 60s took direct control of the school system, seeking to rectify things. Schools were closed in the 70s, lots of them, and many were given to control of native groups.
The point is, context is important. Were the schools you cite in the 90s treating natives as they were treated 100, 200 years before. NO.
No one is saying that the school system was a good idea by modern ideals. This is, in fact, why it was shut down. However, trying to equate how the school system performed in the 90s, to how it performed 100 years prior, is absurd.
There have been issues with water all over Canada in rural communities, not just native communities. My own town had issues with local well water for decades, until we finally built a water treatment plant. Successive federal governments have dealt with these issues on reservation, and I 100% agree that this is an issue. Yet at the same time, we have some chiefs redirecting, or just personally stealing funds marked for local communities. Natives are human beings after all, and so corruption exists here too, and the systems of checks and balances to force some accountability in governmental operations in Canada, don't apply to Native communities. And of course, if the federal government attempts to step in, simply to force accountability, people howl at the "power grab".
I have little care of 'unceded' land, unless there is a historical treaty stating otherwise. You may wonder why I say that? Well as I stated in my initial reply, this is how the world is. Every single piece of land on the planet has people on unceded land. The very use of the term is absurd. Natives, before a single white man arrived, were on unceded land, for they took their land from people here before them. Natives were not the first North Americans.
I can look at any piece of land on Europe, and it is unceded. Taken.
Back to the main point, and back to Canada, it is absolutely not beholden to corporate interests and elites. Claiming so, ignores what each government has done in detail, perhaps focusing only on the mistakes made, and not on the good each government has done.
So I am not defending your incorrect view of Canada and of history, and of modern Canada, but instead I am defending my view of Canada. An imperfect nation, as all are, but as I said in a prior comment, better than most, if not all.
One of the largest issues I see is, everyone has a weird view of the world, in which the culture and beliefs, and traditions of natives would remain unchanged for half a millennium. Yet, let's enact a little thought experiment.
What would have happened if, for example, Europeans arrived in the new world, but instead did not settle here? But at the same time, enacted in open trade with native communities, and open contact.
Well an entirely European free North America would have had its culture evolve. Technological progress would have seeped in, that is unless there is an assertion that natives have no mind for science, technology, the capacity to build things?
And what of trade? Various native tribes and nations warred with one another, Europeans were not required to cause this. Obviously, some would seek to trade furs for guns, yes? And with the right tools, building settlements could aid in defense. We don't really need to look too hard here, for every culture across the entire planet, including many cultures in the Americas build settlements.
And speaking of culture, none of the traditions cited and spoken of today by natives would be unchanged, unvarnished the the steps of time, should natives have controlled North America. Wars would cause the elimination of some tribes and cultures. Cultural ideas would have spread between communities. As technological advances occurred, culture would have changed.
My point in all of this is, it is of great disservice to presume that natives would not change the world around them, ever. That they would not change over time. That no native group, or community would expand and its culture supplant others. This happened all through the Americas, just take a look at the Mayans.
Yet the modern dialog is ... what? That natives would be living today, precisely as they did in the 1500s? Absolutely untrue.
DOJ sues realpage for algorithmic pricing scheme that harms renters
Question for anyone that knows: how does it end? Will some landlords go bust and get bought by 1 or 2 mega corpos, and then rinse and repeat until it's a McDonald's/Burger King monopoly? Will all rentals be owned by a single entity? Are they already owned by one? I heard all these corps are ultimately owned by Blackrock
I am just trying to see what possibly even worse crisis will spawn from this crisis. Population levels are expected to decrease over the coming decades. Will that trigger a collapse in rents? Where will "greed" move to, what novel forms of collusion and exploitation will we suffer instead of it being all focused on rent and property?
Edit: I just realised that the shift may already be happening in the form of other basic necessity industries colluding: utilities, car insurance, "public" transport, food
The article blames "AI" for raising rents, and then later says, "well actually, everyone raised rents".
You can have all the AI in the world, and even all the collusion you can manage, but competition still exists, raise rent to the point that people won't rent, you'll have an empty apartment. Lower it (i.e. ignore the collusion) and you'll fill that spot.
The law of Supply and Demand still works.
The only kind of collusion that might break that law is if landlords are forced by the agreement not to lower rent to compete.
It's really very simple: What's the vacancy rate? If it's low, prices are going up, it's as simple as that. Forget the boogeyman (AKA AI), build more houses.
The problem is on the supply side. It happens because of zoning restrictions. There actually is plenty of housing nationwide, but that isn't really usable because moving involves quite a bit of friction, as well as because of general market failures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RSwkXbjaE0
And because it's constantly talked about by activists: rent control doesn't work. It actually reduces supply (because people who would offer apartments at the top end of the market drop out of the market) and liquidity (because people who do and don't already have a lease are treated differently). This is one of the best agreed-upon results in economics.
https://www.nmhc.org/research-insight/research-notes/2023/re... , among countless other links a basic search might turn up.
The complaint states:
> Across America, RealPage sells landlords commercial revenue management software. RealPage develops, markets, and sells this software to enable landlords to sidestep vigorous competition to win renters’ business. Landlords, who would otherwise be competing with each other, submit on a daily basis their competitively sensitive information to RealPage. This nonpublic, material, and granular rental data includes, among other information, a landlord’s rental prices from executed leases, lease terms, and future occupancy. RealPage collects a broad swath of such data from competing landlords, combines it, and feeds it to an algorithm.
Based on this process and algorithm, RealPage provides daily, near realtime pricing “recommendations” back to competing landlords. These recommendations are based on the sensitive information of their rivals. But these are more than just “recommendations.” Because, in its own words, a “rising tide raises all ships,” RealPage monitors compliance by landlords to its recommendations. RealPage also reviews and weighs in on landlords’ other policies, including trying to—and often succeeding in— ending renter-friendly concessions (like a free month’s rent or waived fees) to attract or retain renters. A significant number of landlords then effectively agree to outsource their pricing function to RealPage with auto acceptance or other settings such that RealPage as a middleman, and not the free market, determines the price that a renter will pay. Competing landlords choose to share their information with RealPage to “eliminate the guessing game” about what their competitors are doing and ultimately take instructions from RealPage on how to make business decisions to “optimize”—or in reality, maximize—rents.
You don't have to say anything else. That's collusion.
>The rent increase guideline for 2025 is 2.5%.
>The guideline is the maximum a landlord can increase most tenants’ rent during a year without the approval of the Landlord and Tenant Board.
>The provincial maximum on rent-controlled apartments last year was 2.5 per cent, but Sharpe’s building has no limit because Ontario Premier Doug Ford removed controls on any rental units built or occupied after November, 2018.
She also pointed out that virtually all of the grocery stores in Toronto are owned by one company.
But of course this isn't practical for many people, as they'll need somewhere else to live, and the landlord can drag out the renovation as long as they want to. The landlord does have to give you 1-3 months rent, but if you're in a rent-controlled apartment, that may not cover your rent elsewhere. And of course some landlords aren't going to follow the rules, and many tenants don't know their rights.
Demolishing the apartment building and building a new one gets around this too, which is common when a small building is replaced with a large tower. The new building won't have rent control.
Details on the rules are here:
https://tribunalsontario.ca/documents/ltb/Notices%20of%20Ter...
They don’t need AI or analysis.
Canada has record immigration levels. And at the same time cities across the country decided, with the support of voters, that new residential development can not be on undeveloped lands. It must be on previously developed lands and increase density
Of course redevelopment is more expensive, takes longer, requires more consultation and planning.
The result is a severe shortage of housing.
Instead of solving this with suburban sprawl, which isn’t ideal but is necessary, politician, voters, and density ideologist choose to blame a scapegoat.
Landlords are an obvious candidate. Adding AI to the mix makes it a trendy story.
Actually maybe that future is now.
what happened to "you paid $100 last year. now from january you pay $120 or vacate?"
you have 10 apartments and they are priced at say $1000/month. whats so confidential about that?
or are you saying the AI is fed with tenant data to see which tenant is more viable to pay more rent based on income et al? like dynamic pricing? holy fuck
Its like arguing about whether to eat apples or oranges on Mars when you can't even get to Mars. Its irrelevant. The alternative is society gets a lot worse for a lot of people and tinkering with plugging legal gaps doesn't address the issue of whether we think people are entitled to a place to live if they are part of our society.
Going back in time, do you think the local village is going to let its warriors or farmers sleep outside in the cold with no shelter then expect them to work as a community for the benefit of the village elders?
Its a core issue, everything else is just busywork at this stage.
Canadian businesses were lobbying as well as pressure from Ontario Premier Ford and Mayor Olivia Chow. The Ontario and Nova Scotia provincial governments have ordered return to office minimum 3 days a week by October.
Governments in Canada are not sleeping. Quite the opposite in fact.
How do you convert an amount of money into a number of registered properties ?
I think the GP used ~6.1 trillion as that value, or maybe some number related to rental stock valuation. The <0.1% looks approximately correct.
I'm not sure why we should care about the share of money they command, as it could have nothing to do with whether they're dominant or not, depending on how skewed the market it.
PS: to note, I was commenting on the process, but on the deeper point, Dream Unlimited is only one of the company caught in this, so we could have any number of other developpers roped in at a later date. I think we really don't have any idea how widespread the issue is.
Pick any number for average cost of a property, and its still only 0.1% of all properties.
So it’s not so much the company itself optimizing based on its own data but the argument goes, at least per the antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, that the landlords are all colluding together via an intermediary.
I think RealPage and similar systems probably add a few percentage points to rents - and if you consider how much money that is across 1000's of renters, it's worth suing them over.
But supply and demand are still the gorilla in the room.
I really don’t understand your question.
Yes supply and demand are the gorillas, but pricing collusion like this has always generally been illegal regardless of the size of the effect so I don’t understand your point.
https://www.threads.net/@davidnwelton/post/C_T1ADRyAMi?xmt=A...
Markets are competitive, even with RealPage, so you can't really just "ask as much as people will pay", just like you can't at the grocery store either.
If you see "it only inconveniences forty thousand people" and think "well yeah, it's only forty thousand, that's a small number", you don't understand numbers. Even at just over 0.01%, that's five thousand lives being controlled to the point of being held hostage by one company.
No Canadian should accept that as "this is fine and normal and fair".