- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- A group of lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the United States
- A complaint filed by Washington D.C.’s Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider
- RealPage recommends prices for roughly 4.5 million housing units in the United States
- RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions
A group of renters in the U.S. say their landlords are using software to deliver inflated rent hikes.
“We’ve been told as tenants by employees of Equity that the software takes empathy out of the equation. So they can charge whatever the software tells them to charge,” said Kevin Weller, a tenant at Portside Towers since 2021.
Tenants say the management started to increase prices substantially after giving renters concessions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Haha I’m in this picture!
One was small claims court. They kept my security, tried to charge me a exit fee and demanded I pay more for cleanup. Then a late fee for refusing to pay! The idiots sent a manager over to small claims to defend it, who was literally out of her element. The judge kept going, “Where in the lease does it say that?” And this dummy manager didn’t know anything, forcing the court to give me my security deposit and drop the fees.
The other was threatening small claims court for an $2k because they ignored my email of my exit date, and tried to charge me a extra month. They immediately “found all my paperwork” all of a sudden and dropped it.
These fuckers are absolutely nickeling and diming people. And more people should be ready to flood the courts with their bullshit.
My uncle is a landlord.
He has NEVER had to pay a security deposit back. The judges in this small town always side with him.
Your uncle is a scum lord
Sounds like a cunt 👍
Justice comes for everyone eventually 😘
Does it though? I can point to thousands of people that justice never came for.
I personally believe that when Christ returns, he’ll establish a fair equitable and just society here on earth, then resurrect everyone, inviting them to participate.
In that society justice will be served, but that’s not really hope for people suffering now.
Yeah we have to build the torment nexus.
Bro, hell isnt in the bible, death is just death, a ton of verses describe it as ‘sleep’.
Death very obviously isn’t justice. It’s just sleep.
… the torment nexus isn’t justice either but it’s fun to think about.
It certainly does.
You might have misread that 🤭
You might have misread what I was saying. 🥴🤒😵💫😮💨
Is it your fault one of your relatives is a jackass?
I’d be ashamed to even tell anyone I was related to a l*ndlord
Good for you. Your shame would be misplaced. What my uncle does has nothing to do with me.
deleted by creator
You literally just declared “my uncle is a landlord” with no additional information. What did you expect?
You’re right. I should have expected mouth breathing communist crusaders to think I was bragging… on Lemmy of all places.
Congrats? The fuck you want a cookie?
Sure, moron.
I’ll take a cookie.
Like it’s my fault or something.
Sorry man, I was in a bad mood and took it out on you.
We need a national renters bill of rights! Rent control is badly needed because no one can afford to live anymore. If America becomes a nation of renters our economy will collapse.
Everyone should have ownership of their home. I do not know the mechanism for how to transition from rent to ownership, but its the only ethical, economical way.
The answer is probably a combination of things. We need to be able to build more houses / duplexes / apartment buildings / etc. That’s a fact. There could be ways to help people build their own house (up to code) and cut out the middleman.
If people could easily build their own, do you know how fast property values would drop? Homes in the middle of nowhere should cost nothing.
Homes in the middle of nowhere are already cheap. Making more housing isn’t a solution if billion dollar corporations can just buy all of them up for more than asking.
Corporations buy housing because they beleive its a good investment.
Right now, they’re right. But a lot of that is because it’s legally hard to build enough new housing to keep up with demand in many cities because most of their area is zoned exclusively for mcmansions.
Housing in the middle of nowhere being cheap if you can’t get a good job in the middle of nowhere.
We need housing where people work. Living in the middle of nowhere isn’t helpful for 75% of the country.
You think if people build their own houses, then mysterious billion dollar corporations will buy them up? That’s… weird. I don’t know how that would be bad. You could just build another one.
My answer, cap the number of single-family rental homes in a given jurisdiction. Give 5-year chits that authorize a property owner to rent the property, then every 5 years have some sort of event that allows someone else to take the chit. That way you don’t have 80% of the single-family homes being bought up for rentals and it doesn’t bar the market from having new people enter.
As for the event, my preference is for a landleech Thunderdome. Two blood suckers enter, one leaves, and they are allowed to profit off someone else’s hard work. Corporations are allowed to participate by champion proxy, but the champion must be a C-level executive and they must participate in every match for every property they rent.
Apartments and multi-family homes (duplex, triplex, etc.) can be rentals as far as I am concerned because there is room for it in society, but housing needs to be put in the constitution as a right (as does food) and rent has to be more regulated.
Or we could just ban single family house renting. Hell, the a few cities where they should be banning any new single family housing at all.
If America becomes a nation of renters our economy will collapse.
That seems like a weird assertion.
It is honestly not. Property ownership is currently the primary method for being able to collateralize small business loans. Without the general populace having access to that, that initial step for starting a new business or pursuing a venture before it is viable for investment becomes VERY difficult to achieve. Especially if it is something that requires a lot of involvement or time to get moving. Once you take out the ability to make a startup or small business, you are left with an ever-dwindling pool of options and end up in a persistent state of monopoly it oligopoly for most goods and services, which in turn leads to an utter stagnation of economic conveyance and growth.
Another way it stagnates economic growth is in the increased expense associated with housing. The actual economy, not the BS we are told is the economy, grows when money moves. Individuals and companies buying goods and services from each other. That only happens with disposable income. If everyone is paying 2x what they would in rent that they would in ownership, that comes out of their disposable income. This leads to less luxury (in an economic sense) purchasing and, in many cases, restricted necessity purchasing. So less money is available to move, which causes the economy to shrink.
becomes VERY difficult to achieve
Unless there’s another way, like they’ve achieved in European countries where renting is the norm. Their economies didn’t collapse.
Afaik those countries also have rather extensive tenant rights laws, rent control/caps, and a robust entrepreneur support system, like universal health care and generous PTO laws so people can take time to pursue things while minimizing the risks.
Yes, and none of them have had their economies collapse.
Very true, but let’s see that happen in the US, Australia, or New Zealand. Or any of the other dystopian nightmares that capitalists have manipulated into their own private wonderlands.
I think you’re overestimating how different those countries are.
Well, if this isn’t a classic case of “he said, she said.”
From the article:
“Rather than making independent decisions on what the market here in D.C. calls for in terms of filling vacant units, landlords are compelled, under the terms of their agreement with RealPage, to charge what RealPage tells them,” said [Attorney General of the District of Columbia Brian Schwalb].
Also:
RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions.
So, which one is it?
Regardless, these are some very interesting cases revolving around the Sherman Act as it applies to housing markets.
EDIT: Here’s the video version of the article.
Of course they are free to set their own price, but when the system tells them they should charge a higher price “due to market conditions” of course they take the easy way out instead of actually researching the market. So it’s both, but mostly the first because they are lazy.
Just looked at that company’s website. Gotta love the frigid mentality that causes them to refer to people’s home and shelter as a “business” and talk about “minimizing costs” like it is making fucking dog collars.
If anyone knows how to get in touch with Anonymous, please suggest that they obliterate this dystopian nightmare from the face of the internet.
This is essentially the same way that my employer sets pay ranges.
They send a list of job titles and descriptions to an outside company along with the number of employees and how much each of those employees are paid. Lots of other employers send their info and the outside company tries to match up all the job descriptions and then sends back to all of the employers what the “market range” is for every job.
My employer then decides where in that range they think is “competitive” (hint: its near the bottom). That’s the amount HR and Finance are willing to approve when hiring someone into a role, regardless of experience. The wages are only “competitive” if every other employer goes along with the scheme and offers the same amount.
My (former) job did that. The firm they hired just flst out omitted every regional job equivalent that paid higher, and kept their scope narrowed to places that paid at least $10k less a year. They then recommended pay cuts everywhere, which mostly amounted to cutting enough labor costs just enough to pay for the contract that did the research.
I took it as a sign to start applying elsewhere: glad I did.
In the U.S. (not sure if this is elsewhere) you have the work number too. Employers that participate share every pay period and bonis to your record. Then future employers can look up and see exactly how much you were making when they run the background check.
Man this seems like a great target for Anonymous to permanently cripple… 🙏🏼
Good for the renters. Hopefully they can win.
Get Yardi too. Same crap wrapped up in a more terrible software package.
“the software takes empathy out of the equation”
I can’t wait to see how even more callous the software can get when they add “A.I.” to it. Maybe they’ll just cut out the rental office people altogether and all customer service will be with a glorified chat bot.
lol they think empathy was ever in the equation
I have no idea how people can afford to rent. In my general 5 square mile area, there are literally dozens of new apartment complexes, townhomes, and housing developments that are built strictly to rent, and the rent for all of these places range from $1500 for a 2 bedroom apartment to $3000 per month for the townhomes and rental houses. I just don’t understand the system where these people somehow cannot afford to buy a home but are expected to pay more than a mortgage in rent.
Who is living in them? That’s what I am so confused about. Like who can afford it ? Is it people from neighboring towns that are rich enough to get an apartment in town for work like. I just don’t get who is filling all these new places.
Multiple people living together. I recently went to Washington about an hour north of Seattle at a place I lived at a long time ago. Place was a shithole with plazas boarded up. This was like a decade ago. Went back there this last fall and shitty homes there are like half a million dollars. It took a few days before it clicked at how many fucking cars there were lining up and down all the streets. Even where I visited had like 4 adults; there’s just so many damn people bunking together now even with full time jobs.
Probably not many people long term. When you buy a place to rent it out you need a steady stream of people who want it over the years. Single family homes with 3-4 bedrooms are good for young families.
The problem with lots of these expensive apartment complexes in small towns that can’t support them is: people are not going to be perpetually locked out of houses. Either we will build more houses, build more apartments in better cities, or kids will live with their parents longer.
One of my top priorities for kids I have is housing. College degree? Maybe a state school. But they will definitely need a place to live.
Houses and mortgages in my neighborhood aren’t much cheaper for an older house with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. I know owning and a 300/month savings off that higher rent price is not nothing but it’s not the huge savings it was several years ago to instead have a mortgage. That said I’m not sure how anybody is affording anything.
Price fixing is normal and doesn’t require explicit collusion.
Have you ever seen gas stations on 2 sides of the road with the exact same prices? It’s a genlemen’s agreement.
This lawsuit will go nowhere.
Big landlords use software to scrape rents from all sorts of websites. One site can not be solely blamed. With the data available out there it’s no wonder they’re all aligned
This isn’t a data scraping site. Clients uploaded their rental data to the site directly, and then the site “compares them” and tells the clients what to charge. It also explicitly requires all clients to follow its pricing “recommendations” to maintain those prices.
These landlords outsourced pricing collision to a 3rd party. They formed a monopoly with software and cost their tenats 100s of millions extra in doing so.
I’ve worked within multiple sfr companies over the past 8 years. Including with their product teams building out in house acquisitions and asset management platforms to quickly aggregate comps for rental and sale values. While what you’re saying may be true, there is a lot more beneath the surface. To be clear, institutional single family landlords should be legislated out of existence, but to you and everyone downvoting, you don’t get the big picture here.
