Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Another real estate software company sued over apartment price-fixing claims — The lawsuit follows claims of similar tactics by Richardson software company RealPage::Software company Yardi Systems Inc. and 18 property management companies were named in an antitrust class-action lawsuit Friday accusing the companies of a…
Whaaaat? How was this not massive news!? How many people did this affect?
Wait until you learn about zillows rise and fall. Including how they and all the other sfr companies used the zestimate to skyrocket their home values and rents during covid
Behind the Bastards did a 2 parter on it, and iirc one of the guys who caused airline problems in the 2000s went on to rental real estate after not getting punished enough in that fiasco.
So like if the courts find that the law was broken and the tenants overpaid, do the tenants get a full refund plus interest?
I’m assuming no.
Do you all know about jury nullification? It’s when someone murders an executive who was responsible for raising the rents on millions of people, and despite all the evidence the jury still says not guilty.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Through the RENTmaximizer, the rental companies outsourced their pricing decisions to Yardi and artificially eliminated any competition between them, the suit alleged.
Instead of courting renters based on market conditions, attorneys say property management companies used Yardi’s algorithmic tool to automate the pricing process and implement higher prices collectively across a group of landlords.
“Our antitrust legal team has uncovered what we believe to be a clear gaming of the system through controlled, lockstep algorithmic increases to fix the cost of rent — one that has affected millions of renters,” said Steve Berman, managing partner and co-founder of Hagens Berman, in a statement.
Dallas-based apartment manager, owner and developer Tonti Properties is one of the 18 landlords named in the suit.
ProPublica published an investigation last October on landlords’ use of RealPage’s proprietary YieldStar algorithm to push the highest possible rent prices on tenants for apartments across the U.S.
More than 20 lawsuits against RealPage were consolidated in Nashville federal court in April, Reuters reported.
The original article contains 289 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 43%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
paddirn@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Housing should be considered a human right and there should not be for-profit companies allowed to be renting out apartments. It should only be non-profits whose sole purpose is managing rentals, not these damn rental corporations trying to hoover up every last penny and constantly increasing rates to keep up with “the market”. Every other industry should be lobbying Congress on this, the more of our money goes towards to having to pay rents, the less of it is available for anything else.
SoylentBlake@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Throwing the free market into the housing necedsity is a fine addition to housing - assuming no one is unhoused. Same thing with any kind of insurance. We should be covered by default then allow Cadillac insurance plans on top.
I’m even fine with social housing being the housing equivalent of government cheese. It’s not the best solution but it.is.a.solution. which we don’t have now.
Instead now we have the homeless shitting in the streets. And I don’t blame them. Society shit on them, seems like we could’ve seen this one coming.
Magiccupcake@startrek.website 1 year ago
If housing was true free market, demand would drive new construction.
But its not, developers are artificially constrained into building inefficient single family homes, or giant luxury condos due to zoning and other hindering regulations.
Removing these regulations would allow new upstarts to vastly undercut the current market leading to more affordable housing.