Company that makes rent-setting software for landlords sued for collusion

RealPage worked with some of the nation’s largest landlords to raise rents, says lawsuit.

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[s73v3r]

This app certainly doesn’t help, but housing becoming a speculative asset to put money in and not a roof over your head is what caused this.

Break the big conglomerates and ban things like hotel houses and that will also help a lot.

Frankly, I'd go even further with single-family homes and make it ruinously expensive to own a house you don't live in. Eliminate the so-called passive-income aspect of home ownership and you get rid of landlords sitting on properties for years and letting them slowly decay until they can't squeeze any more money out of them. It'd be a lot easier for folks who just need a place to live if the market wasn't artificially inflated to suit the whims of capital.

I'll admit I don't have as neat a solution for apartments, and I think there should probably be some sort of rental market, but at the end of the day I think we, as a society, are going to have to start treating housing more like a right than a privilege before any of this gets meaningfully sorted out.

Personally, I like doubling your property taxes for every home you own that you don’t live in 8 months out of the year.

In the case of apartment buildings/complexes, the entire building counts as a single unit for the doubling, but C-level execs (or the appropriate parallel) living in a building 8+ months reduce the unit count by 1 to a minimum of 1.

Own six apartment complexes in Detroit and live in a house in Ann Arbor?

Your home = property taxes x1
Apt 1 = x2
Apt 2 = x4
Apt 3 = x8
Etc

Sounds good, except we own a condo we "lease" to my mother-in-law. Her rent is about ten percent of what we pay, because that is what she can afford.

Most people who are renting out other properties that they own are not doing so like that.

 

[s73v3r]

Not saying they didnt do this, but this kind of comparison software could also be used to undercut your competitors. Just having the software wont be enough proof for court. It will have to be shown that they did use it to cartel and not compete.

This software also suggested leaving units vacant specifically to drive up prices.

 

[s73v3r]

Hmm what about capping rental prices at 30% of the combined income of the units renters. If you want to charge more, find higher income renters or allow more people on the lease per unit.

Great way to make it so poor people will never be allowed to rent an apartment ever again.

 

[s73v3r]

Just having the software wont be enough proof for court. It will have to be shown that they did use it to cartel and not compete.

Ah, so they'll play the "prove our state of mind" card in court.

Which is yet another example of the way poor people crime is treated differently than rich people crime. Poor people crimes are just defined as "You did the action." You took the loaf of bread. You voted when you weren't supposed to (sometimes even despite being told you could). Rich people crime has the requirement that you prove that, not only did the person have the intent to do wrong, but that they knew that it was a crime as well. In a just world, things like this program wouldn't be able to be used as an excuse for "We're not actually colluding." Although, in a just world, no engineer would ever work on such an evil project.