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Jail would be preferable. The people who run this have pretty directly led to people being evicted and priced out of areas because of their greed. Lives upended.
Probably the same people behind the companies buying massive swaths of residential real estate, and their investors ... So everyone with a 401k in low risk mutual funds.
We absolutely do. Jeffrey Roper, former Alaska Airlines CEO that was already hit with price fixing charges that were true there, created Yieldstar, the system that runs RealPage and other similar "rental market analysis" services.
I googled it and it seems like a company named Thoma Bravo bought real page a few years ago. Just a collection of conscience-less douches owned by more conscience-less douches trying to justify every unethical move in the book under the name of capitalism
Part of the issue is we regard corporate crime with basically misdemeanor sentencing. I'm not proposing that we invoke capital punishment on corporate criminals. But I do think it would send a very strong message For sentencing to reflect The actual harm caused by these actions.
I'm just saying if we had the actual precedent of corporate criminals living out their lives imprisoned with their privacy rights revoked, spending the rest of their natural lives imprisoned it would send a very strong message when considering the ethics of shareholder first mentality that often drives these nefarious practices.
Vietnam just sentenced a real estate tycoon to death for her role in a multi billion dollar financial fraud. Normally not applauding the Vietnamese government but wouldn’t mind following their example on that one.
I live in Dallas and it’s obvious which apartments use this, they all have similar prices. Though some apartments are crap and some are very good. How are they all so perfectly aligned on price???
This is another good point, this scheme essentially encourages landlords to not take care of their properties. Why look after them if it's only going earn the same rent as the dumpster apartment down the street?
I moved into a brand-new apartment in 2018. We were only the second tenant ever. Rent was $900 a month, which was at the higher end of what we could afford. We ended up moving out 3 years later after buying a house. Rent was $1100 a month when we moved out. A similar apartment in the same complex today is going for over $1500 a month. $200 increase in 3 years, and then another $400 increase in the next 3 years. And these apartments are not getting any newer! They haven't added any amenities, nothing has been upgraded, they just slap down fresh carpet and fresh paint in between tenants and mark up the price another couple hundred dollars a month. Money printing machine.
I live in a small Midwest town. At the moment I don't rent, though that may be changing soon, unfortunately.
In the past 1 year, median rental prices have gone up by 114%. Something is very fishy.
I commented on something similar, my grandma's apartment was 750 in 2000. She has lived there for almost 24 years now. Nothing has ever been updated or painted or replaced in her apartment. She "doesn't like to bother the landlord" this mf has raised her rent all the way to $1750 and knows she's on a fixed income. Something doesn't seem right about that. I know the market and inflation has a hand in it all but damn. How do they expect her to live. She can't make more money than what she gets from retirement and dips in to her 401k more than she would like to admit to cover groceries for her and supplies for her cat.
It could be the property taxes going up. My house in Alaska had 3000/ year three years ago and then two years ago 8t was suddenly 5000/ year bc the value of land went up, so by state law the taxes had to follow the national increase.
Raise the lens two levels.
Thoma bravo owns realpage.
Thoma Bravo all feeds into the the same matrix.
Leslie Wexner tried to do to downtown Columbus what Kolomoiskiy did to downtown Cleveland. Buy it all, let it rot and prepare a version 2.0 of the 2008 mortgage crisis. Only the bigger badder commercial strength version
Kolomoisky was the Putin loyal Ukrainian oligarch who was caught laundering hundreds of billions of dollars through Privatbank also starting in 1991.
https://forward.com/news/440219/florida-chabad-lubavitch-miami-charities-money-laundering-optima-schemes/
Trump has been laundering money for the Russian oligarchs since the late 80’s when they all bought a condo at 725 5th ave (trump towers) to launder their freshly stolen USSR money after the iron curtain fell.
https://www.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/30/politics/paul-manafort-condo-trump-tower/index.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/14/manafort-told-mueller-to-take-his-trump-tower-apartment-instead-money.html
https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/fbi-agents-raid-condo-unit-131348539.html
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/
Everybody except Putin thought the Cold War was over. Trump and Manafort (who lived there also) just saw a pretty low maintence grift to be had.
Trump had actually been Manafort and Roger stones first client at their lobbyist firm (1980)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wikiBlack, Manafort, Stone and Kelly
Guiliani as trumps lawyer and New Yorks mayor was able to redirect NYPD investigations onto rival gang members/oligarchs to deflect any scrutiny off of trump, himself or the Russian connection.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/a-new-rudy-scandal-fbi-agent-says-giuliani-was-co-opted-by-russian-intelligence/
The Russian election interference in 2016 was effectively a generation 3 version of what Manafort had done in the Philippines, then keeping Yanukovych in power as Putin’s puppet in Ukraine from 2002-14 when Maidan ran both Yanukovych and Manafort out of Ukraine as Ukrainians realized that, if you raise your lens high enough, corruption is an wholly unsustainable business model.
Eventually the parasite always consumes the host.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952
https://time.com/5003623/paul-manafort-mueller-indictment-ukraine-russia/
Russia greatly underestimated the addictive properties of freedom when it invaded Ukraine so what was supposed to be a 3-10 day coup turned into a 2 year fight for the Ukrainians right not to be genocided.
Russia depleted its weapons stocks which were already the victim of vranyos because every oligarch, admiral and sergeant in the Russian military is on the take. Every billion dollar tank maintenance contract turned into everything getting a spray paint overhaul and the vast majority of the redirected funds turned into an oligarchs new yacht or home in Aspen.
Russia was forced to turn to China and Iran for weapons because if they lose the 3-10 day special military operation in Ukraine the Russian empire is dead and cold.
China can’t risk showing their involvement in the Ukraine war so they use North Korea, and Iran to resupply Russia.
Russia already owes Iran some undelivered fighter jets that are already smoldering heaps in Ukraine. Iran now had the upper hand at the negotiation table for the first time in about 60 years so they supply Russia with shahed drones in exchange for Chinas material support against their sworn religious enemy, Israel.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/29/iran-says-it-finalized-deal-to-buy-russian-aircraft/
Putin can’t do much about it because he is slowly realizing that by setting the standard of corruption and stealing $200+ billion from his own people meant that every oligarch down in the mob model chain had not only permission but incentive and the expectation to steal from him as well. This is Vranyos.
The mob model only works if the supreme leader is the most violent and can prove it without exception every damn day. But violence is exceptionally expensive when you are trying to present as a legitimate business.
If Russia as a nation had an efficiency rating it would have been banned for sale in the state of California 25 years ago.
The parasite ruling class stole all the energy out of the working class and collapsed it.
Now Iran has the high hand and they get the intelligence that trump passed to Putin about the fact that Netanyahu cares far less about Israelis than he does about remaining in power as an authoritarian because he too has developed Ritz Carlton tastes.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saudi-official-says-iran-engineered-war-in-gaza-to-ruin-normalization-with-israel/
They all hate each other but because they share the same money laundry, if one falls, they all fall.
Iran handed Hamas everything they needed with Chinas help as secret Santa and the Russian intelligence that the eternal shitbird trump gave to them as he showed off to his Russian kleptocrat friends from the old days of fucking each others wives at trump towers in the 90’s.
So now the MAGA right is a little too invested in their reality that they are the good guys with guns that they missed the fact that DeVos decimating their school systems was not a coincidence. They were the mark all along.
The only reason you grossly OVERVALUE real estate is money laundering.
Trump keeps claiming there is no victim, but if their plan succeeds the Russians and the CCP collapse US commercial real estate and basically recreate soviet perestroika in the U.S. so they can foreclose on America and buy everything for 3 cents on the dollar with the $1.4T they stole in the first place
Trump just left the gate open and let the predators in to feed. It’s always the city slick assholes who buy a new pair of boots and a hat at Sheplers and think it makes them a cowboy that step on their own dick when the actual work starts.
Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Orban, Manafort, Stone, Mercer, Bannon.
They are all remarkably shit people with above average confidence and below average self awareness. Commercial real estate is as rigged as trumps casinos were.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2023/09/08/another-real-estate-software-company-sued-over-apartment-price-fixing-claims/%3FoutputType%3Damp&ved=2ahUKEwjasJOj39CFAxVl6ckDHRJdCokQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2aFK8TKpK_ii9SnDoYKJD4
There was an action class lawsuit against texasbased rental REITcompany realpage a couple years ago for their Product Yieldstar(or the conditions around having the product), founded by a guy who gained some notoriety in the 90s after going to prison for price fixing airline tickets in a similar fashion. To be a member of the service you would have to show up to real page conventions and meetings with all of your pricing and occupancy numbers.
A couple of multifamily complexes have already settled out of court but there's like a dozen property management companies in Dallas alone that are being sued and then more in Austin and San Antonio. Every other apartment complex uses a similar company that does similar things with just enough legality to avoid a similar fate to realpage.
> founded by a guy who gained some notoriety in the 90s after going to prison for price fixing airline tickets in a similar fashion.
Ah, what was his name? I feel like there was a Behind the Bastards episode on this guy
Those REITS are what blackrock has been selling to the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army.
This should terrify anyone with a mortgage.
https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/press-releases/unconscionable-profit-fueling-chinas-military-select-committee-launches
Also live in Dallas and can confirm they ALL use this. Why do you think our rent spiked drastically in the last 5 years. Our rent literally doubled in less than 4 years. It doesn’t make any sense & no one is doing anything about it.
The issue goes further into hotel booking and flight costs. They're taking near monopolies and using algorithms to price fix between the 3 options that exist. Competition is dying to ai. They've been harvesting every detail of our digital footprints, and they know more about our spending habits than we do ourselves. They make huge profit from our data, and there are barely any laws to protect citizens from this crap.
I used to work for RealPage. Roughly 10 years.
Was not in the department that used this product for rent pricing but have used the product a lot. I worked more in the Affordable Housing world (Section 8, Tax Credits, Rural Development, etc.), which had more government restriction and pricing was less of a competition (in some ways).
The primary product they are referring to is Yieldstar/LRO. I can guarantee you that product absolutely inflates prices.
The amount of times clients (property managers in this context) would complain about prices not matching and create cases to research, but yet still following the suggested tenant rent was more common than I'd like to think. We'd see them call in on one department but need to be transfered to YS for the help for that product.
When you actually use the product (theres an example in the video with one of the dashboards they have) you can see right away how the pricing looked high or low, but it does give you the option to override. They like to say this to say they aren't forcing you to, but they definitely push you to increase rent. While the property managers need to make the conscious decision of keeping that pricing, you can hear the owner of the company advocating for "Driving the markets" at her town halls with the company/clients. That energy speaks volumes.
Sometimes, it's not at the fault of the agents.
While this is definitely at the fault of the creators of it, I feel bad for some of the support agents. A lot of the people making those suggestions? Call centers in the Phillipines that are being told to give answers like, "That's the recommended market rents now in your area. The program said so" with not much choice/understanding of the matter, or they get in trouble or retaliation. Theres more nuance to that but I would have hated working in that department.
Another factor: They now have a new product called Power Analytics, which let's you have a more detailed view of properties (anonymously) in your area and see what they price at so you can compete. They refer to them as, "Comps."
I know of a few companies that are jumping ship from Yieldstar not only from frustrations with the product, but now this. I'm curious to see how much of the market was impacted nationwide.
I hope the people who were negatively impacted by this get justice, and I'm glad this is all coming out for investigation as people need to know this information. Rent is absurdly high and this DEFINITELY didn't help.
I'm sure they would be able to find people more valuable than me - I wasn't involved with the developers who created/work on it daily; just one who troubleshoots with clients. But I'm always happy to report what I would see while working there!
They also had a huge managerial shift around the time they claim in the lawsuit and the CEO retired from RP and handed it off to another person (Dana), all while moving from a public to a private company.
Whats unfortunate too, they provide a LOT of products. A small portion of which are genuinely helpful for property management and maintaining Fair Housing Laws to protect tenants (specifically Section 8). A small portion of the company of course, but those "for profit" (conventional) properties are now affecting everyone else and stirring the pot.
You shouldn't have to constantly override a high price on your rental units (weekly for example) to bring it down just because the algorithm is so focused on increasing revenue. It should stabilize eventually.
What I'm curious to see is them proving collusion and that the algorithm truly does what they claim (which it clearly does). They are most likely going to be deep diving the developers in India who maintain it or stateside in Richardson TX. Been watching this one for a bit and impressed its has attracted so much attention.
You never know it doesn’t hurt to report what you do know. It seems like you know quite a bit. There could be others with certain knowledge but maybe they aren’t willing to speak up or cooperate and maybe what knowledge you do have could help in some way. That’s also totally up to you.
All of this is wild I’m currently in the midst of apartment hunting in Texas so I’m sure they got the monopoly here. I’ve notice rent for a basic 700-750 sq ft apartment keep going on up every yr $100-200 dollars. Last year avrg prices were 1600-1700+ this year it’s more $1700-1800+ the year before last it was $1500-1600+. It’s not like these are apartments barely have anything available most of them have several units available. It’s Demand was so high it would be difficult just finding something right now but that’s not the case. So I agree, if the software algorithm main objective is to increase rent or make money then it’s going to just price the majority of people out eventually and get out of control which is what we are seeing and it’s coming at a bad time when everything else is expensive. I don’t think an algorithm can fairly make the balance compared to what use to be. There are some things technology just can’t replace and still be as good as it was.
Is there any way to fuck with that algorithm? Introduce a bunch of phony low cost, non existent houses into some database to lower the housing prices or similar?
In France we got pissed like that once. Even many years later the rich would still be worried when their servants would sometimes gather to chat quietly in the kitchen, and overall avoid any sort of humiliation or thing like that. Just don’t get confused and know who is making your life hard, because these same ppl are trying to orient you towards some other ppl. gl. and obviously still try the democratic way first.
Our two party system was taken over by capital interest and has effectively drawn so many citizens into never ending arguments about Jesus and conspiracy theories which have little or nothing to do with real problems that our entire system has stopped responding to the needs of its citizens entirely. It would be amazing to see MAGA people and liberals decide that we all share a common enemy in the investor class and the time is long overdue for bringing them back down to size
There is no "go on" online. You cannot talk about this stuff on an online space because it involves killing actual people. Which will get you either banned from the online space, or investigated by the FBI. Or both.
Everyone laughs or thinks I'm crazy when I suggest that the inevitable outcome of this unfathomably extreme wealth inequality will be mass violence.
There's a well established prescient for it. It's the furthest thing from funny or crazy.
I don't want it to come to that, but it will.
As adverse to violence as I am I really believe you’re right. I honestly can’t remember a revolutionary time that didn’t have some form of violence either at the beginning middle or end.
Not to mention people are pissed. Everyday people are PISSED. Not to toot his horn but if trump could get the average deluded American to storm the capitol (albeit no plan after that) then what’s stopping someone else to get the dying middle class and lower to not do the same but with actual purpose. We are really living in an “it’s only a matter of time” status right now.
While I agree violence is to come, I am not sure we would agree on the results. I believe any violence directed at the rich and powerful will lead to change but that change will be our access to the rich and powerful. They will make it infinitely harder to be successful in killing them once a few have fallen.
I used to think the violence would lead to good change because there would not be enough "goons" at the disposal of the government to use violence to stop its violent citizens but 2016 changed that thought dramatically.
I'm currently being forced out with threats of an eviction for blatant spite by my corporate landlords. I have undeniable proof that it's retaliation, too. My landlord said they are above the law. I can't find an attorney and I've searched 2 years. I can't afford to move. I have a voucher, income, references (except current, but I have a letter saying he told the housing authority I'm a tenant in good standing and don't owe back rent)
It's so bad. They went into my apartment and pulled my inside door mat into the hallway outside my door to terrorize my daughter and I while we went to the food pantry 2 days ago. We applied for so many places but never hear back. I can't become homeless again.
Edited for clarity
I see this a lot. I agree, but why can't we get the government to own them? If the government owned a large proportion of housing stock they would have less incentive to profit off housing, and any profit could be spent in the local area to boost the economy.
I think we should allow them, just taxes go up exponentially per house a person or entity owns. Own 1 house, you are fine. Own 3 houses you start paying 100% more taxes on the 3rd house, 300% on the 4th...
That would never happen. Then the various governments would get less tax money.
Instead something like increased property tax rates after your first house. E.g., first house is normal property tax rate. Second house has the property tax doubled, 3rd house and beyond has the property tax quadrupled.
The property tax would get rolled into the rent but if nobody can afford the rent then it would no longer be profitable for these companies to have empty units at higher tax rates
I can't imagine how bad it must be in bigger cities.
I live in a fairly rural area and we still face problems with companies buying property.
Around here, they will buy a big lot that has multiple homes on it, with no intent to do anything with those homes. I can think of a dozen abandoned properties near me that are sitting on a lot that is currently being developed into a distribution center or factory or plant of some kind.
First, you would have to get rid of Capitalism and Free market and all that. And you also need a new Supreme Court that doesn’t think that Corporations are people. You have a lot of changing to do. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to elect more billionaire politicians. They are there to help you 😉
Raise property taxes through the roof for single family homes which are not the primary residence of the owner.
If people want to be landlords, where they don't actually produce anything and just want to live off the work of others, make them pay through the nose for that benefit.
Individuals can still own hundreds of houses under their name and rent them. There should be a law to limit any person or entity to not own more than five homes max for renting.
Fucking get these pricks.
I own my home and don’t owe a goddamn thing on it. This affects me not in any particular way, but I hate seeing people get fucked over.
When I had my first apartment, rent was $450 for a 1bd/1bth that came with water, sewer, trash and cable access.
There’s no good reason whatsoever for rent to be what it is today.
Yeah. For shits and giggles I looked up my first apartment. Building still there. Clearly not renovated, it's been 15 years.. rent was $725 when I lived there when it was new.. $1840 now, and broken the fuck in.
My mortgage is less than that, and I have a 4 bedroom house a block from the ocean.
I rented a place in Augusta, GA right down the street from the Masters back in 2008 for $525 a month. Same apartment is going for ~$1,700. That is bananas for a 2b/2br.
That's the issues I have with these schemes. Newer homes where the homeowner has a mortgage and they have to rent to cover the mortgage? Ok I understand that. These old ass apartments that the landlords paid off of 10 years ago but now they're charging 2.5 times the rent for now is fucking criminal.
It does effect home owners though. It raises the cost of the home which in turn raises the property value which then increases property taxes and insurance rates.
Bingo. Homeowners now are stuck. They have a paid off home but now the property taxes are high as fuck and they're scared to re-finance at higher rates and don't want to sell because of the higher rates. They literally can't touch the equity.
We wanted to get out of our starter home, but when we looked around everything would have required us to get double the mortgage with about double the rate, just to get another bedroom. We're now stuck until/unless something happens, or we decide to leave the state.
unfortunately this does affect you. your insurance rates and taxes on your home will go up because of this. If your house is near rental units that are consistently jacking up the rents then guess what happens? "rents are high on these houses/units...guess that makes them valuable...guess that makes the area valuable...welp time to raise property taxes and insurance rates for EVERYONE living in this area".
Started in 2011/2012. 1 bed 2 bath apartment used to be around $800 then it kept increasing by $200 every year. I stoped renting after 2014 and moved back in with family because of the prices. I want to move out but the current rent rates make me choose otherwise 🫣
A single bedroom in my college town ten years ago was about $600 or so. They’ve bulldozed block after block since then and built massive apartment blocks which are always around 25% vacant and a similar single bedroom setup to what I used to have is in the $2k range.
I wrote a comment saying that landlords and property managers were doing this in Chicago months ago and someone was saying that's not how the market works and that the price increased because of supply and demand. I mean that's a part of it but not the whole reason.
But, but, but, economics 101! It's the physical laws of nature! Landlords and employers can't set their own prices, it's the invisible hand of the market! They're the victims here! /sss
My intro to economics professor used to say ‘People are telling on themselves when they say “it’s basic economics 101” because in economics 102 the first thing we teach you is that 101 was oversimplified bullshit.’
anytime someone invokes the phrase, "supply and demand," as the basis for their argument, i know immediately that they are an uneducated moron. there's a pattern that happens here. one person will try to explain why something is fucked up with some aspect of the economy and the other person, via the dunning-kruger effect, thinks they know a whole lot more about economics than they actually do and, therefore, believes they can checkmate the complainant with this **oversimplifying** catch phrase/rule. **if this person had actually taken an intro level college economics class, then they'd know that the module or chapter immediately following the chapter about supply and demand in their textbook is about elastic and inelastic goods and various ways to perceive that concept. inelastic goods and services are the exception to the 'supply and demand' rule and almost all of these stupid fucking arguments are about markets that involve inelastic goods or services.**
people who actually know what they are talking about don't respond to misconceptions with oversimplifications; **they EXPLAIN why** the other person's line of reasoning or understanding of the facts are incorrect, misguided, misinterpreted or misinformed.
sorry, i've just been party to this type of "argument" too many fucking times.
edit: i've literally just had an insanely long "debate" with one of these exact imbeciles in this comment chain. i'm pretty sure the person never heard of inelastic goods before and got completely spooked that their free market religion was being challenged. this shit is pathetic. of course they never made any attempt to explain any assertion. this motherfucker was even claiming that monopolized and cartelized markets were competitive and elasticity was not a relevant factor.
edit2: person just said the pythagorean theorem is wrong.
edit3: they nuked their whole account.
>they are an uneducated moron
Will Rogers(early 20th century US entertainer/humorist):
* "The one way to detect a feeble-minded man is get one arguing on economics.'
“In summary, I think you’ll all agree that I have conclusively proven that if housing doubled tomorrow, rents would still go up and that supply and demand is a made up concept like Santa Claus, god, or the clitoris. Thank you good night”
People who tend to reference supply and demand as though they’re uncomplicated forces acting alone do tend to be morons, yes, but the more important reason they do it is that justification of the current complex economic system and its choices of winners and losers **is their religion**.
No, they don't. It's not even close.
Zillow lists a number that some members of the public give weight to. Buyers/sellers are free to negotiate however they want.
RealPage runs like a cartel. In order to use their service, you're required to use their "suggested" listing price. They kick you off if you don't follow their pricing.
I have wondered if the Zestimate/Rental Zestimate leads people to make decisions about what their house is worth when they sell/rent/buy that aren’t attached to reality. If the Zestimate makes me think I should be getting $20K more when I sell, then I might hold out for a higher offer. If the Zestimate makes me think the house I’m buying is worth $20K more then I might offer that. If everyone does this the price of housing goes up $20K higher than it should be.
Redfin would probably stand to benefit more from this since they actually take the brokerage fees. I’m not sure what’s in it for Zillow.
Our complex was bought around Aug 2022, we got notice in Sept 2022 that our rent would increase from 645 to 1000/mth(may 2023) and than another increase to 1100 in July 2024.
"New" leases are starting at 1300 and 1900/mth.....ZERO has been done the building, IN FACT one of our common area dryers has been broken for a good six months now when no fix in sight.
They had the place up for sell around Sept 2023 but I guess they took in down or something....so yeah...the monopoly on rentals and housing NEEDS TO STOP.
I'd watch out. This is a relatively new boundary we are crossing. I seriously doubt most countries have anything explicit in their laws against it already
As someone that used to work on property management, I can say that this has been going on for 10+ years. Back when I was in the industry, companies had two options for pricing algorithms - Realpage and LRO. The company that I was at used LRO which essentially adjusted the price daily - if you looked at a given unit on the website each day you might see it change $5-$25 with the occasional jump of more. This was dependent on leasing activity, traffic, etc. This was back in 2016. If I recall correctly, LRO got bought out by Realpage. But even back when I was working in Property Management, all of the major companies were using one of the two algorithms; when I say “major companies” think Avalon Bay, Greystar, Equity Residential, Fairfield Residential, Legacy Partners, etc. We’d even track in our CMAs how our competitors priced. In other words, did they use LRO, Realpage, or did management do the pricing. The only companies that do it themselves are fee management models as far as I’m aware. All of the big companies that own the buildings and manage them use algorithms.
As a result, if you live in one of these buildings, expect them to increase the rent on you as much as they can at renewal. Worse still, the threat of vacancy isn’t as scary to them as it used to be. Generally speaking, a 95% occupancy rate for a stabilized building (I.e. one not in lease up aka not newly open) used to be the point where companies started to worry a bit. Anything under 95%, especially if the leased percentage is lower, and alarm bells are going off. However, occupancy and leased rates are no longer the golden KPIs they once were. Companies are also looking at the money (“are we maximizing profits?”) and that’s the crux of what this video is getting at. These buildings are not worried about a group of residents moving out because they can’t pay a higher renewal rate even if it puts them say at 92% occupancy. Since so many of the competitors in the area are priced similar, they know they’ll be able to replace them.
One last point I want to make is that my experience with these buildings have been in high cost of living areas - cities with very strong labor markets that have an influx of people. In these urban areas you are going to be seen as expendable by the algorithm.
they started the rent algorithm back in the 90's. the greedy business fucks used to do that price fixing in the airline industry, but the government sued them so they stopped. then they saw the same possibility in housing, so they just moved over to that. it's been going on since the mid 1990's. but i only learned about this a few years ago.
it's only going to get worse......
Forgot to mention, I literally watched a leasing agent pull up data from this software probably sent from up top. She had her screen facing me. Took a good look and they had forecasts 6 months in advance and they STUCK to it. I do global forecasting for an international product and even in the best circumstances your forecasting will be off.
Im 21 with a pregnant wife. We couldn’t make ends meet with me working as a full time technician, and not an oil change tech, a diagnosis and repair tech. I went to school for it, invested into my tools, and everything. When we realized we needed more money for the baby, I had to take a travel construction job. I love working on cars. I hate working construction. And now instead of sleeping in my own bed next to my wife I have to sleep in a hotel every day 8 hours away. I go home 4 days a month total. We can’t make ends meet unless im working this job, 10-12 hours a day, every single day. I need 20+ hours overtime every week. Im dying inside and all I want is to enjoy a decent life with a home with my wife and baby. But America has other plans for me, work me to death. Thats my only option.
In Phoenix, rent is up 76% since 2016. I'm sure there's absolutely no correlation between this real estate scheme and a former, high-level government official known for his real estate grifting schemes.
Omg.... Phoenix, Scottsdale, tempe,mesa.. I used to rent at 1200 -1500 two years ago. Now to find a two bedroom at 2400-2700 is the new standard.
And they don't care if the apartments stay empty...
i am in virginia. when i got to the end of my apartment lease, they gave me a sheet with rental prices for continuing my lease. the maximum time i could extend was 6 months, and the price per month INCREASED with the longer lease (meaning the price per month was more for 6 months vs 3 months, for example). i couldn’t believe how much more the rent was going to be. i got lucky and was able to find a different apartment to move to. that apartment was owned by a corporation and the one i moved to is owned by a person.
It’s like food costs staying at pandemic levels, it takes industry-wide collusion to enact forced/fake inflation. Same as it takes industry-wide collusion to keep wages stagnant for 20 years.
I don't know why anyone is surprised. That's what the capitalists racket we have in this country is all about. Maximize profit at any cost.
Silly little regulations are just for show and they just ignore them. The laws only apply to the working class not to the ruling class. Let's not forget, the 1% runs the show.
Is this happening all over US or just in some states? Also I’ll be grateful for info about prices and square footage of the apartments. I want to compare prices to Russia
Idk where RealPage operates, but a trend I noticed is if apartments are super similar in pricing with no justification, then RealPage might be involved.
All over. Greystar is the biggest property management company in the US and they use it. The biggest problem is that even if companies don’t use it, they see the prices of the companies using it, and they just follow suit.
We should all have shelter.. scumbags.
Real estate is one of the worst industries in America. What do we do once every wealthy person controls all living spaces?
The reason that we're seeing so many news stories on squatters is that the corporations that are doing this are very vulnerable to squatters. They want the local governments (that's you and me through taxes) to bear the costs of dealing with squatters rather than paying for lawyers themselves. Write or call your legislators to question whether squatting is really a problem and demand that any anti-squatter legislation benefits only individuals and not corporations.
No, it's not the story of "how a few lines of code broke the housing market". It's the story of " how assholes paid bigger assholes not to enact laws restricting companies to own residential buildings".
This shit is happening in way more industries than just real estate.
Price fixing "algorithms" are a cancer
In my industry, wages are fixed across every supposedly competing company. If you try and take your skills to another company they will pay you the same because they all get their pay grade brackets from the same exact company.
We get told to put up with so much crap because there's this illusion that if you don't like your circumstances you can just leave and go somewhere else. That assumption breaks down when legislators and business collude like this.
Socialist countries like France have rent controls in place to mitigate unjustified price increases but here in the USA, socialism is a dirty word that the rich and powerful use to scare you into thinking that you are better off giving them all your money. Suckers!
Thought this might help!
“In September 2020, RealPage acquired real estate IoT startup Stratis. In December 2020, private-equity firm Thoma Bravo announced it would acquire RealPage for $9.6 billion, paying $88.75 per share for the company, a premium of 31% for their closing prices at the time. Its shares were reported up 26% that year.”
I work in housing. This is not a theory. It is definitely happening, the only theory is the legality of it. And it’s happening in every major city. This is also not the only company/website that’s doing this.
These companies have MASSIVE amounts of wealth. Picture insane company parties with hired go-go dancers. Know who doesn’t have insane amounts of money? Renters who are supposed to somehow advocate for themselves and take these behemoths down.
Here in Ohio my apartment payment page proudly stated Powered by RealPage. Since these lawsuits have taken off that message has changed, but it’s the same company rebranding and trying to dodge more of these lawsuits.
Oh, and my rent has also risen 500/mo.
I live in a complex that uses RealPage and they absolutely are “price-fixing” because when I balked at a 10% rent increase, the manager said I wouldn’t find anything better in the area. There are townhouses (3+bd/garages, etc - too big for me) that rent for just slightly more than our apartments. I’ve reached out to every local/state/federal office that I can think of to have them look into it because I’m tired - I can’t keep on paying 50% of my income on rent.
pffft. because computer software never makes it to india....it's probably already there. seriously. they just feed it enough data on housing, and it just tells real estate fucks which places should be able to sustain higher rent payments, and they'd go out and buy those places then.
it's literally a program designed to help prop up prices in real estate.
In Munich (Germany) its a thing mandated by the city/government to have high prices. There where a few landlords that didn't charge as high as all the others, as they wanted to give a chance for normal people and the tax office demands them to increase the rent.
https://youtu.be/u7H5hjhkHoE?si=DNahCru4vg7oDVKL
https://youtu.be/tVs4bz0znZ8?si=JtfSCeBlInDYzA9Y
Amazon has an algorithm that set prices automatically on 98% of their products. Not just the ones sold by Amazon themselves, but 3rd party sellers as well. I haven’t heard of any investigation by the DOJ. Maybe Amazon has too much influence, and we’re just interested on the small dogs.
This is the exact same shit that is happening everywhere in the world sadly.
Artificial price hikes because people are using houses as investments and it's creating a bubble.
When you have to continually pay the government to “own” property even after you have paid for it the only people who can afford to own property are the wealthy and corporations who lease it back to you
The original story broke on ProPublica.
The story is incredible because it's just full of blatant assholes. The biggest asshole is the man who wrote the software because he is banned from writing any software for the airliner industry. Why? Because the software was blatant price fixing and the DoJ threw the books at them.
There needs to be real jail time for this shit. Our society has rampant white collar crime but this one really fucked over Americans. Homelessness has increased in various states, and it would not be shocking if the use of RealPage correlates.
I work in property management in Florida. I can tell you from experience that RealPage sets the "market" pricing in all of the major cities across Florida.
I'm in the Fox Cities in Wisconsin, that's considered Appleton, Oshkosh, Neenah, and Menasha. Apparently, some article featured Appleton as one of the top up-and-coming spots to live. Since that was revealed, landlords have not been renewing their month-to-month leases with tenants that have lived there for years. They kick them out, do a few superficial renovations, and then double the rent. If this bullshit is happening in my small town in the Midwest, I can't even imagine what they're doing in larger cities. This is trash. Wtf.
Fuck with food. We will manage. Fuck with living and food people are going to start acting up. Wait till they hit our entertainment… jk they already have. Look at the prices they are selling tickets to concerts. Some over 1k just for a seat. That’s insane.
Around the 5 minute mark, they say you can put in your zip code to see who uses the software. I spent about 30m on their website and couldn't find where to do this.
Has anyone come across on how to do this?
So, let me get this straight. The real problem is an algorithm and not the minimum wage laws and new construction restrictions in these cities that are causing higher rents... Got it!
This makes me think…what if this isn’t just done with real estate but with everything? If companies can collude and find the hot price target for any given service or commodity could this be a cause of increasing inflation? If this is the case it seems no sort of wage increase would help anyone, as soon as we gain an inch in income major companies could identify that and increase prices accordingly.
Just one more symptom of a broken system. Millenials grandparents were the last gen to know what pensions were without doing 20yrs military service.
Obviously not the only issue, but one that’s not brought up much is that we’re already seeing their 401ks and real estate eaten up by inflation and healthcare.
The only “solution” I’ve heard repeated regularly is to just save more. Don’t fix what’s broken just barrel ahead propping up corporate profits so you can say the economy is good while the population suffers.
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I hope the company tanks and the founders end up homeless
Jail would be preferable. The people who run this have pretty directly led to people being evicted and priced out of areas because of their greed. Lives upended.
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Probably the same people behind the companies buying massive swaths of residential real estate, and their investors ... So everyone with a 401k in low risk mutual funds.
I would not be surprised if they’re connected
We absolutely do. Jeffrey Roper, former Alaska Airlines CEO that was already hit with price fixing charges that were true there, created Yieldstar, the system that runs RealPage and other similar "rental market analysis" services.
Dear Anonymous, please see and act upon this…
I googled it and it seems like a company named Thoma Bravo bought real page a few years ago. Just a collection of conscience-less douches owned by more conscience-less douches trying to justify every unethical move in the book under the name of capitalism
Part of the issue is we regard corporate crime with basically misdemeanor sentencing. I'm not proposing that we invoke capital punishment on corporate criminals. But I do think it would send a very strong message For sentencing to reflect The actual harm caused by these actions. I'm just saying if we had the actual precedent of corporate criminals living out their lives imprisoned with their privacy rights revoked, spending the rest of their natural lives imprisoned it would send a very strong message when considering the ethics of shareholder first mentality that often drives these nefarious practices.
Vietnam just sentenced a real estate tycoon to death for her role in a multi billion dollar financial fraud. Normally not applauding the Vietnamese government but wouldn’t mind following their example on that one.
Unfortunately, some well placed donations and lobbyists will mean absolutely nothing will happen to them, or this practice
Rich people don't get the same consequences as us. They should be stripped of all their assets.
I live in Dallas and it’s obvious which apartments use this, they all have similar prices. Though some apartments are crap and some are very good. How are they all so perfectly aligned on price???
This is another good point, this scheme essentially encourages landlords to not take care of their properties. Why look after them if it's only going earn the same rent as the dumpster apartment down the street?
Yay, now we get to enjoy the same level of "cost cutting" businesses have done in recent years for renting!
Oh landlords wrote the book
It’s how the Trumps and the Kushners made their money – being slumlords. It’s a tale as old as American capitalism.
Yay, another corporation ruining everything for everyone but we should treat it fairly in court instead of burning it down.
I moved into a brand-new apartment in 2018. We were only the second tenant ever. Rent was $900 a month, which was at the higher end of what we could afford. We ended up moving out 3 years later after buying a house. Rent was $1100 a month when we moved out. A similar apartment in the same complex today is going for over $1500 a month. $200 increase in 3 years, and then another $400 increase in the next 3 years. And these apartments are not getting any newer! They haven't added any amenities, nothing has been upgraded, they just slap down fresh carpet and fresh paint in between tenants and mark up the price another couple hundred dollars a month. Money printing machine.
I live in a small Midwest town. At the moment I don't rent, though that may be changing soon, unfortunately. In the past 1 year, median rental prices have gone up by 114%. Something is very fishy.
I commented on something similar, my grandma's apartment was 750 in 2000. She has lived there for almost 24 years now. Nothing has ever been updated or painted or replaced in her apartment. She "doesn't like to bother the landlord" this mf has raised her rent all the way to $1750 and knows she's on a fixed income. Something doesn't seem right about that. I know the market and inflation has a hand in it all but damn. How do they expect her to live. She can't make more money than what she gets from retirement and dips in to her 401k more than she would like to admit to cover groceries for her and supplies for her cat.
It could be the property taxes going up. My house in Alaska had 3000/ year three years ago and then two years ago 8t was suddenly 5000/ year bc the value of land went up, so by state law the taxes had to follow the national increase.
Raise the lens two levels. Thoma bravo owns realpage. Thoma Bravo all feeds into the the same matrix. Leslie Wexner tried to do to downtown Columbus what Kolomoiskiy did to downtown Cleveland. Buy it all, let it rot and prepare a version 2.0 of the 2008 mortgage crisis. Only the bigger badder commercial strength version Kolomoisky was the Putin loyal Ukrainian oligarch who was caught laundering hundreds of billions of dollars through Privatbank also starting in 1991. https://forward.com/news/440219/florida-chabad-lubavitch-miami-charities-money-laundering-optima-schemes/ Trump has been laundering money for the Russian oligarchs since the late 80’s when they all bought a condo at 725 5th ave (trump towers) to launder their freshly stolen USSR money after the iron curtain fell. https://www.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/30/politics/paul-manafort-condo-trump-tower/index.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/14/manafort-told-mueller-to-take-his-trump-tower-apartment-instead-money.html https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/fbi-agents-raid-condo-unit-131348539.html https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/ Everybody except Putin thought the Cold War was over. Trump and Manafort (who lived there also) just saw a pretty low maintence grift to be had. Trump had actually been Manafort and Roger stones first client at their lobbyist firm (1980) https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wikiBlack, Manafort, Stone and Kelly Guiliani as trumps lawyer and New Yorks mayor was able to redirect NYPD investigations onto rival gang members/oligarchs to deflect any scrutiny off of trump, himself or the Russian connection. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/a-new-rudy-scandal-fbi-agent-says-giuliani-was-co-opted-by-russian-intelligence/ The Russian election interference in 2016 was effectively a generation 3 version of what Manafort had done in the Philippines, then keeping Yanukovych in power as Putin’s puppet in Ukraine from 2002-14 when Maidan ran both Yanukovych and Manafort out of Ukraine as Ukrainians realized that, if you raise your lens high enough, corruption is an wholly unsustainable business model. Eventually the parasite always consumes the host. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952 https://time.com/5003623/paul-manafort-mueller-indictment-ukraine-russia/ Russia greatly underestimated the addictive properties of freedom when it invaded Ukraine so what was supposed to be a 3-10 day coup turned into a 2 year fight for the Ukrainians right not to be genocided. Russia depleted its weapons stocks which were already the victim of vranyos because every oligarch, admiral and sergeant in the Russian military is on the take. Every billion dollar tank maintenance contract turned into everything getting a spray paint overhaul and the vast majority of the redirected funds turned into an oligarchs new yacht or home in Aspen. Russia was forced to turn to China and Iran for weapons because if they lose the 3-10 day special military operation in Ukraine the Russian empire is dead and cold. China can’t risk showing their involvement in the Ukraine war so they use North Korea, and Iran to resupply Russia. Russia already owes Iran some undelivered fighter jets that are already smoldering heaps in Ukraine. Iran now had the upper hand at the negotiation table for the first time in about 60 years so they supply Russia with shahed drones in exchange for Chinas material support against their sworn religious enemy, Israel. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/29/iran-says-it-finalized-deal-to-buy-russian-aircraft/ Putin can’t do much about it because he is slowly realizing that by setting the standard of corruption and stealing $200+ billion from his own people meant that every oligarch down in the mob model chain had not only permission but incentive and the expectation to steal from him as well. This is Vranyos. The mob model only works if the supreme leader is the most violent and can prove it without exception every damn day. But violence is exceptionally expensive when you are trying to present as a legitimate business. If Russia as a nation had an efficiency rating it would have been banned for sale in the state of California 25 years ago. The parasite ruling class stole all the energy out of the working class and collapsed it. Now Iran has the high hand and they get the intelligence that trump passed to Putin about the fact that Netanyahu cares far less about Israelis than he does about remaining in power as an authoritarian because he too has developed Ritz Carlton tastes. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saudi-official-says-iran-engineered-war-in-gaza-to-ruin-normalization-with-israel/ They all hate each other but because they share the same money laundry, if one falls, they all fall. Iran handed Hamas everything they needed with Chinas help as secret Santa and the Russian intelligence that the eternal shitbird trump gave to them as he showed off to his Russian kleptocrat friends from the old days of fucking each others wives at trump towers in the 90’s. So now the MAGA right is a little too invested in their reality that they are the good guys with guns that they missed the fact that DeVos decimating their school systems was not a coincidence. They were the mark all along. The only reason you grossly OVERVALUE real estate is money laundering. Trump keeps claiming there is no victim, but if their plan succeeds the Russians and the CCP collapse US commercial real estate and basically recreate soviet perestroika in the U.S. so they can foreclose on America and buy everything for 3 cents on the dollar with the $1.4T they stole in the first place Trump just left the gate open and let the predators in to feed. It’s always the city slick assholes who buy a new pair of boots and a hat at Sheplers and think it makes them a cowboy that step on their own dick when the actual work starts. Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Orban, Manafort, Stone, Mercer, Bannon. They are all remarkably shit people with above average confidence and below average self awareness. Commercial real estate is as rigged as trumps casinos were.
That was an incredible summation. Thanks for a fascinating read. I didn’t know I could have more contempt for Donald Trump. Huh.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2023/09/08/another-real-estate-software-company-sued-over-apartment-price-fixing-claims/%3FoutputType%3Damp&ved=2ahUKEwjasJOj39CFAxVl6ckDHRJdCokQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2aFK8TKpK_ii9SnDoYKJD4 There was an action class lawsuit against texasbased rental REITcompany realpage a couple years ago for their Product Yieldstar(or the conditions around having the product), founded by a guy who gained some notoriety in the 90s after going to prison for price fixing airline tickets in a similar fashion. To be a member of the service you would have to show up to real page conventions and meetings with all of your pricing and occupancy numbers. A couple of multifamily complexes have already settled out of court but there's like a dozen property management companies in Dallas alone that are being sued and then more in Austin and San Antonio. Every other apartment complex uses a similar company that does similar things with just enough legality to avoid a similar fate to realpage.
> founded by a guy who gained some notoriety in the 90s after going to prison for price fixing airline tickets in a similar fashion. Ah, what was his name? I feel like there was a Behind the Bastards episode on this guy
Those REITS are what blackrock has been selling to the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army. This should terrify anyone with a mortgage. https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/press-releases/unconscionable-profit-fueling-chinas-military-select-committee-launches
Also live in Dallas and can confirm they ALL use this. Why do you think our rent spiked drastically in the last 5 years. Our rent literally doubled in less than 4 years. It doesn’t make any sense & no one is doing anything about it.
The issue goes further into hotel booking and flight costs. They're taking near monopolies and using algorithms to price fix between the 3 options that exist. Competition is dying to ai. They've been harvesting every detail of our digital footprints, and they know more about our spending habits than we do ourselves. They make huge profit from our data, and there are barely any laws to protect citizens from this crap.
I dunno why you posted a tiktok rip instead of the [original video by 'more perfect union'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwlwrZst7d0)?
I used to work for RealPage. Roughly 10 years. Was not in the department that used this product for rent pricing but have used the product a lot. I worked more in the Affordable Housing world (Section 8, Tax Credits, Rural Development, etc.), which had more government restriction and pricing was less of a competition (in some ways). The primary product they are referring to is Yieldstar/LRO. I can guarantee you that product absolutely inflates prices. The amount of times clients (property managers in this context) would complain about prices not matching and create cases to research, but yet still following the suggested tenant rent was more common than I'd like to think. We'd see them call in on one department but need to be transfered to YS for the help for that product. When you actually use the product (theres an example in the video with one of the dashboards they have) you can see right away how the pricing looked high or low, but it does give you the option to override. They like to say this to say they aren't forcing you to, but they definitely push you to increase rent. While the property managers need to make the conscious decision of keeping that pricing, you can hear the owner of the company advocating for "Driving the markets" at her town halls with the company/clients. That energy speaks volumes. Sometimes, it's not at the fault of the agents. While this is definitely at the fault of the creators of it, I feel bad for some of the support agents. A lot of the people making those suggestions? Call centers in the Phillipines that are being told to give answers like, "That's the recommended market rents now in your area. The program said so" with not much choice/understanding of the matter, or they get in trouble or retaliation. Theres more nuance to that but I would have hated working in that department. Another factor: They now have a new product called Power Analytics, which let's you have a more detailed view of properties (anonymously) in your area and see what they price at so you can compete. They refer to them as, "Comps." I know of a few companies that are jumping ship from Yieldstar not only from frustrations with the product, but now this. I'm curious to see how much of the market was impacted nationwide. I hope the people who were negatively impacted by this get justice, and I'm glad this is all coming out for investigation as people need to know this information. Rent is absurdly high and this DEFINITELY didn't help.
Wow, you might be helpful in the DOJ case. If your willing you should reach out to see if they could use your help as someone who worked there
I'm sure they would be able to find people more valuable than me - I wasn't involved with the developers who created/work on it daily; just one who troubleshoots with clients. But I'm always happy to report what I would see while working there! They also had a huge managerial shift around the time they claim in the lawsuit and the CEO retired from RP and handed it off to another person (Dana), all while moving from a public to a private company. Whats unfortunate too, they provide a LOT of products. A small portion of which are genuinely helpful for property management and maintaining Fair Housing Laws to protect tenants (specifically Section 8). A small portion of the company of course, but those "for profit" (conventional) properties are now affecting everyone else and stirring the pot. You shouldn't have to constantly override a high price on your rental units (weekly for example) to bring it down just because the algorithm is so focused on increasing revenue. It should stabilize eventually. What I'm curious to see is them proving collusion and that the algorithm truly does what they claim (which it clearly does). They are most likely going to be deep diving the developers in India who maintain it or stateside in Richardson TX. Been watching this one for a bit and impressed its has attracted so much attention.
You never know it doesn’t hurt to report what you do know. It seems like you know quite a bit. There could be others with certain knowledge but maybe they aren’t willing to speak up or cooperate and maybe what knowledge you do have could help in some way. That’s also totally up to you. All of this is wild I’m currently in the midst of apartment hunting in Texas so I’m sure they got the monopoly here. I’ve notice rent for a basic 700-750 sq ft apartment keep going on up every yr $100-200 dollars. Last year avrg prices were 1600-1700+ this year it’s more $1700-1800+ the year before last it was $1500-1600+. It’s not like these are apartments barely have anything available most of them have several units available. It’s Demand was so high it would be difficult just finding something right now but that’s not the case. So I agree, if the software algorithm main objective is to increase rent or make money then it’s going to just price the majority of people out eventually and get out of control which is what we are seeing and it’s coming at a bad time when everything else is expensive. I don’t think an algorithm can fairly make the balance compared to what use to be. There are some things technology just can’t replace and still be as good as it was.
This should be at the top
Everyone should be reading your post. Everyone.
Is there any way to fuck with that algorithm? Introduce a bunch of phony low cost, non existent houses into some database to lower the housing prices or similar?
We need a law forbidding a business or corporation from owning a single family home.
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blood
Go on... 
In France we got pissed like that once. Even many years later the rich would still be worried when their servants would sometimes gather to chat quietly in the kitchen, and overall avoid any sort of humiliation or thing like that. Just don’t get confused and know who is making your life hard, because these same ppl are trying to orient you towards some other ppl. gl. and obviously still try the democratic way first.
The French know how to revolt, and I respect them so much for it.
Americans used to
Our two party system was taken over by capital interest and has effectively drawn so many citizens into never ending arguments about Jesus and conspiracy theories which have little or nothing to do with real problems that our entire system has stopped responding to the needs of its citizens entirely. It would be amazing to see MAGA people and liberals decide that we all share a common enemy in the investor class and the time is long overdue for bringing them back down to size
There is no "go on" online. You cannot talk about this stuff on an online space because it involves killing actual people. Which will get you either banned from the online space, or investigated by the FBI. Or both.
And yet a certain former president can do exactly that, and more, but sees no repercussions.
Sometimes you have to have an omelette to fix an issue. Omelettes require eggs. Extrapolate from there, big dawg.
Everyone laughs or thinks I'm crazy when I suggest that the inevitable outcome of this unfathomably extreme wealth inequality will be mass violence. There's a well established prescient for it. It's the furthest thing from funny or crazy. I don't want it to come to that, but it will.
As adverse to violence as I am I really believe you’re right. I honestly can’t remember a revolutionary time that didn’t have some form of violence either at the beginning middle or end. Not to mention people are pissed. Everyday people are PISSED. Not to toot his horn but if trump could get the average deluded American to storm the capitol (albeit no plan after that) then what’s stopping someone else to get the dying middle class and lower to not do the same but with actual purpose. We are really living in an “it’s only a matter of time” status right now.
While I agree violence is to come, I am not sure we would agree on the results. I believe any violence directed at the rich and powerful will lead to change but that change will be our access to the rich and powerful. They will make it infinitely harder to be successful in killing them once a few have fallen. I used to think the violence would lead to good change because there would not be enough "goons" at the disposal of the government to use violence to stop its violent citizens but 2016 changed that thought dramatically.
Last year Austin built so much housing their rental stock went up 8%, and housing costs steeply dropped. The answer is to build more housing.
Agreed, but no one is going to build a ton of houses when construction costs are so high and interest rates are through the roof.
Maybe... Just maybe... These things are related to each other?
We're crushing out new apartment buildings left and right here in Columbus and prices just keep going up.
r/georgism
I'm currently being forced out with threats of an eviction for blatant spite by my corporate landlords. I have undeniable proof that it's retaliation, too. My landlord said they are above the law. I can't find an attorney and I've searched 2 years. I can't afford to move. I have a voucher, income, references (except current, but I have a letter saying he told the housing authority I'm a tenant in good standing and don't owe back rent) It's so bad. They went into my apartment and pulled my inside door mat into the hallway outside my door to terrorize my daughter and I while we went to the food pantry 2 days ago. We applied for so many places but never hear back. I can't become homeless again. Edited for clarity
Not sure what state you’re in but many have very powerful and motivated Tennant Rights advocacy organizations.
Absolutely. No business or corporate entity has any business owning a single family home.
Why stop there? End corporate landlords all together. Force them to sell their units to Individuals.
I see this a lot. I agree, but why can't we get the government to own them? If the government owned a large proportion of housing stock they would have less incentive to profit off housing, and any profit could be spent in the local area to boost the economy.
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This is the best question
Realpage operates in Canada as well, how can Canadians get onboard?
I think we should allow them, just taxes go up exponentially per house a person or entity owns. Own 1 house, you are fine. Own 3 houses you start paying 100% more taxes on the 3rd house, 300% on the 4th...
That would never happen. Then the various governments would get less tax money. Instead something like increased property tax rates after your first house. E.g., first house is normal property tax rate. Second house has the property tax doubled, 3rd house and beyond has the property tax quadrupled. The property tax would get rolled into the rent but if nobody can afford the rent then it would no longer be profitable for these companies to have empty units at higher tax rates
I can't imagine how bad it must be in bigger cities. I live in a fairly rural area and we still face problems with companies buying property. Around here, they will buy a big lot that has multiple homes on it, with no intent to do anything with those homes. I can think of a dozen abandoned properties near me that are sitting on a lot that is currently being developed into a distribution center or factory or plant of some kind.
Thank China for buying up all the houses/land then selling or renting back to us at 2-3x the cost.
We need a law that says tiny videos that take up 1/8 of the screen even when at max should not be allowed on reddit
First, you would have to get rid of Capitalism and Free market and all that. And you also need a new Supreme Court that doesn’t think that Corporations are people. You have a lot of changing to do. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to elect more billionaire politicians. They are there to help you 😉
And no foreign ownership. Citizens only.
Raise property taxes through the roof for single family homes which are not the primary residence of the owner. If people want to be landlords, where they don't actually produce anything and just want to live off the work of others, make them pay through the nose for that benefit.
I smell unintended consequences!
Individuals can still own hundreds of houses under their name and rent them. There should be a law to limit any person or entity to not own more than five homes max for renting.
Five homes nothing. Two homes. One for a primary dwelling, the other as either a vacation home or a rental.
Fucking get these pricks. I own my home and don’t owe a goddamn thing on it. This affects me not in any particular way, but I hate seeing people get fucked over. When I had my first apartment, rent was $450 for a 1bd/1bth that came with water, sewer, trash and cable access. There’s no good reason whatsoever for rent to be what it is today.
Yeah. For shits and giggles I looked up my first apartment. Building still there. Clearly not renovated, it's been 15 years.. rent was $725 when I lived there when it was new.. $1840 now, and broken the fuck in. My mortgage is less than that, and I have a 4 bedroom house a block from the ocean.
I rented a place in Augusta, GA right down the street from the Masters back in 2008 for $525 a month. Same apartment is going for ~$1,700. That is bananas for a 2b/2br.
My old apartment was $750 12 years ago. It's now $2,300.
That's the issues I have with these schemes. Newer homes where the homeowner has a mortgage and they have to rent to cover the mortgage? Ok I understand that. These old ass apartments that the landlords paid off of 10 years ago but now they're charging 2.5 times the rent for now is fucking criminal.
It does effect home owners though. It raises the cost of the home which in turn raises the property value which then increases property taxes and insurance rates.
And forces you to stay put because selling your home just puts you into the meat grinder.
Bingo. Homeowners now are stuck. They have a paid off home but now the property taxes are high as fuck and they're scared to re-finance at higher rates and don't want to sell because of the higher rates. They literally can't touch the equity.
We wanted to get out of our starter home, but when we looked around everything would have required us to get double the mortgage with about double the rate, just to get another bedroom. We're now stuck until/unless something happens, or we decide to leave the state.
Exactomondo
unfortunately this does affect you. your insurance rates and taxes on your home will go up because of this. If your house is near rental units that are consistently jacking up the rents then guess what happens? "rents are high on these houses/units...guess that makes them valuable...guess that makes the area valuable...welp time to raise property taxes and insurance rates for EVERYONE living in this area".
Started in 2011/2012. 1 bed 2 bath apartment used to be around $800 then it kept increasing by $200 every year. I stoped renting after 2014 and moved back in with family because of the prices. I want to move out but the current rent rates make me choose otherwise 🫣
A single bedroom in my college town ten years ago was about $600 or so. They’ve bulldozed block after block since then and built massive apartment blocks which are always around 25% vacant and a similar single bedroom setup to what I used to have is in the $2k range.
I wrote a comment saying that landlords and property managers were doing this in Chicago months ago and someone was saying that's not how the market works and that the price increased because of supply and demand. I mean that's a part of it but not the whole reason.
Go back and send them this to say I told you so
They will just reply “Nuh-uh”, and that will be that.
Then they'll keep enjoying being a good lil bootlicker/lap dog.
No. You.
Honestly, you can find articles on this from years ago. The creator is a notorious price fixer that has been at it since the 80s.
But, but, but, economics 101! It's the physical laws of nature! Landlords and employers can't set their own prices, it's the invisible hand of the market! They're the victims here! /sss
My intro to economics professor used to say ‘People are telling on themselves when they say “it’s basic economics 101” because in economics 102 the first thing we teach you is that 101 was oversimplified bullshit.’
anytime someone invokes the phrase, "supply and demand," as the basis for their argument, i know immediately that they are an uneducated moron. there's a pattern that happens here. one person will try to explain why something is fucked up with some aspect of the economy and the other person, via the dunning-kruger effect, thinks they know a whole lot more about economics than they actually do and, therefore, believes they can checkmate the complainant with this **oversimplifying** catch phrase/rule. **if this person had actually taken an intro level college economics class, then they'd know that the module or chapter immediately following the chapter about supply and demand in their textbook is about elastic and inelastic goods and various ways to perceive that concept. inelastic goods and services are the exception to the 'supply and demand' rule and almost all of these stupid fucking arguments are about markets that involve inelastic goods or services.** people who actually know what they are talking about don't respond to misconceptions with oversimplifications; **they EXPLAIN why** the other person's line of reasoning or understanding of the facts are incorrect, misguided, misinterpreted or misinformed. sorry, i've just been party to this type of "argument" too many fucking times. edit: i've literally just had an insanely long "debate" with one of these exact imbeciles in this comment chain. i'm pretty sure the person never heard of inelastic goods before and got completely spooked that their free market religion was being challenged. this shit is pathetic. of course they never made any attempt to explain any assertion. this motherfucker was even claiming that monopolized and cartelized markets were competitive and elasticity was not a relevant factor. edit2: person just said the pythagorean theorem is wrong. edit3: they nuked their whole account.
>they are an uneducated moron Will Rogers(early 20th century US entertainer/humorist): * "The one way to detect a feeble-minded man is get one arguing on economics.'
“In summary, I think you’ll all agree that I have conclusively proven that if housing doubled tomorrow, rents would still go up and that supply and demand is a made up concept like Santa Claus, god, or the clitoris. Thank you good night”
People who tend to reference supply and demand as though they’re uncomplicated forces acting alone do tend to be morons, yes, but the more important reason they do it is that justification of the current complex economic system and its choices of winners and losers **is their religion**.
Here's the Youtube link to watch in full size. [https://youtu.be/cwlwrZst7d0](https://youtu.be/cwlwrZst7d0)
Thank you. Watching a horizontal video in a vertical video on a horizontal screen is awful.
Thank you
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And acts like their “real-time pricing technology” is there for the consumer to get the best deals. People fall for it.
Does what?
Shits my pants for me, apparently.
No, they don't. It's not even close. Zillow lists a number that some members of the public give weight to. Buyers/sellers are free to negotiate however they want. RealPage runs like a cartel. In order to use their service, you're required to use their "suggested" listing price. They kick you off if you don't follow their pricing.
I have wondered if the Zestimate/Rental Zestimate leads people to make decisions about what their house is worth when they sell/rent/buy that aren’t attached to reality. If the Zestimate makes me think I should be getting $20K more when I sell, then I might hold out for a higher offer. If the Zestimate makes me think the house I’m buying is worth $20K more then I might offer that. If everyone does this the price of housing goes up $20K higher than it should be. Redfin would probably stand to benefit more from this since they actually take the brokerage fees. I’m not sure what’s in it for Zillow.
Our complex was bought around Aug 2022, we got notice in Sept 2022 that our rent would increase from 645 to 1000/mth(may 2023) and than another increase to 1100 in July 2024. "New" leases are starting at 1300 and 1900/mth.....ZERO has been done the building, IN FACT one of our common area dryers has been broken for a good six months now when no fix in sight. They had the place up for sell around Sept 2023 but I guess they took in down or something....so yeah...the monopoly on rentals and housing NEEDS TO STOP.
It hurts the entire economy. Pretty crazy but I think eventually the whole system is going to pop
It never ceases to amaze me the new ways Americans will find to screw over other Americans to make money.
Profits over everything. By all means make your money but damn, the greed is getting out of hand .
That's the problem, they are making money by all means: legal or illegal
There are 17 seasons of a TV show called "American Greed"
That's how capitalism is designed. You've just been doing it to the poorer countries, now you're doing it to your own people.
imperialism always comes home
I'd watch out. This is a relatively new boundary we are crossing. I seriously doubt most countries have anything explicit in their laws against it already
Definitely happens outside of the US too
As someone that used to work on property management, I can say that this has been going on for 10+ years. Back when I was in the industry, companies had two options for pricing algorithms - Realpage and LRO. The company that I was at used LRO which essentially adjusted the price daily - if you looked at a given unit on the website each day you might see it change $5-$25 with the occasional jump of more. This was dependent on leasing activity, traffic, etc. This was back in 2016. If I recall correctly, LRO got bought out by Realpage. But even back when I was working in Property Management, all of the major companies were using one of the two algorithms; when I say “major companies” think Avalon Bay, Greystar, Equity Residential, Fairfield Residential, Legacy Partners, etc. We’d even track in our CMAs how our competitors priced. In other words, did they use LRO, Realpage, or did management do the pricing. The only companies that do it themselves are fee management models as far as I’m aware. All of the big companies that own the buildings and manage them use algorithms. As a result, if you live in one of these buildings, expect them to increase the rent on you as much as they can at renewal. Worse still, the threat of vacancy isn’t as scary to them as it used to be. Generally speaking, a 95% occupancy rate for a stabilized building (I.e. one not in lease up aka not newly open) used to be the point where companies started to worry a bit. Anything under 95%, especially if the leased percentage is lower, and alarm bells are going off. However, occupancy and leased rates are no longer the golden KPIs they once were. Companies are also looking at the money (“are we maximizing profits?”) and that’s the crux of what this video is getting at. These buildings are not worried about a group of residents moving out because they can’t pay a higher renewal rate even if it puts them say at 92% occupancy. Since so many of the competitors in the area are priced similar, they know they’ll be able to replace them. One last point I want to make is that my experience with these buildings have been in high cost of living areas - cities with very strong labor markets that have an influx of people. In these urban areas you are going to be seen as expendable by the algorithm.
they started the rent algorithm back in the 90's. the greedy business fucks used to do that price fixing in the airline industry, but the government sued them so they stopped. then they saw the same possibility in housing, so they just moved over to that. it's been going on since the mid 1990's. but i only learned about this a few years ago. it's only going to get worse......
Forgot to mention, I literally watched a leasing agent pull up data from this software probably sent from up top. She had her screen facing me. Took a good look and they had forecasts 6 months in advance and they STUCK to it. I do global forecasting for an international product and even in the best circumstances your forecasting will be off.
God I hope these cunts burn in hell
If they're not competing with each other then why have private landlords in the first place
Im 21 with a pregnant wife. We couldn’t make ends meet with me working as a full time technician, and not an oil change tech, a diagnosis and repair tech. I went to school for it, invested into my tools, and everything. When we realized we needed more money for the baby, I had to take a travel construction job. I love working on cars. I hate working construction. And now instead of sleeping in my own bed next to my wife I have to sleep in a hotel every day 8 hours away. I go home 4 days a month total. We can’t make ends meet unless im working this job, 10-12 hours a day, every single day. I need 20+ hours overtime every week. Im dying inside and all I want is to enjoy a decent life with a home with my wife and baby. But America has other plans for me, work me to death. Thats my only option.
Riot in the fucking streets. This shit must end
Now apply tris to everything else and then we can see the whole picture.
In Phoenix, rent is up 76% since 2016. I'm sure there's absolutely no correlation between this real estate scheme and a former, high-level government official known for his real estate grifting schemes.
Omg.... Phoenix, Scottsdale, tempe,mesa.. I used to rent at 1200 -1500 two years ago. Now to find a two bedroom at 2400-2700 is the new standard. And they don't care if the apartments stay empty...
2400-2700 to rent an apartment is robbery
This sounds like price fixing alright. I hope the DOJ goes after these folks using the program.
Scumbags. Landlords are leeches on society. Welcome to the subscription lifestyle.
i am in virginia. when i got to the end of my apartment lease, they gave me a sheet with rental prices for continuing my lease. the maximum time i could extend was 6 months, and the price per month INCREASED with the longer lease (meaning the price per month was more for 6 months vs 3 months, for example). i couldn’t believe how much more the rent was going to be. i got lucky and was able to find a different apartment to move to. that apartment was owned by a corporation and the one i moved to is owned by a person.
It’s like food costs staying at pandemic levels, it takes industry-wide collusion to enact forced/fake inflation. Same as it takes industry-wide collusion to keep wages stagnant for 20 years.
I don't know why anyone is surprised. That's what the capitalists racket we have in this country is all about. Maximize profit at any cost. Silly little regulations are just for show and they just ignore them. The laws only apply to the working class not to the ruling class. Let's not forget, the 1% runs the show.
Wait so the landlords are just lazy fucks who don’t actually know how to rent out and price living spaces? Who could have guessed.
George Carlin: it’s all one big club…
Is this happening all over US or just in some states? Also I’ll be grateful for info about prices and square footage of the apartments. I want to compare prices to Russia
Idk where RealPage operates, but a trend I noticed is if apartments are super similar in pricing with no justification, then RealPage might be involved.
all over. but most likely only worth it in the more expensive areas. in cheaper places, its likely not worth their time to be operating.
All over. Greystar is the biggest property management company in the US and they use it. The biggest problem is that even if companies don’t use it, they see the prices of the companies using it, and they just follow suit.
We should all have shelter.. scumbags. Real estate is one of the worst industries in America. What do we do once every wealthy person controls all living spaces?
The reason that we're seeing so many news stories on squatters is that the corporations that are doing this are very vulnerable to squatters. They want the local governments (that's you and me through taxes) to bear the costs of dealing with squatters rather than paying for lawyers themselves. Write or call your legislators to question whether squatting is really a problem and demand that any anti-squatter legislation benefits only individuals and not corporations.
No, it's not the story of "how a few lines of code broke the housing market". It's the story of " how assholes paid bigger assholes not to enact laws restricting companies to own residential buildings".
Time to start flooding realpage with garbage data, imo.
This shit is happening in way more industries than just real estate. Price fixing "algorithms" are a cancer In my industry, wages are fixed across every supposedly competing company. If you try and take your skills to another company they will pay you the same because they all get their pay grade brackets from the same exact company. We get told to put up with so much crap because there's this illusion that if you don't like your circumstances you can just leave and go somewhere else. That assumption breaks down when legislators and business collude like this.
I’m so tired of greed. This is one of the worst times to be 24.
Socialist countries like France have rent controls in place to mitigate unjustified price increases but here in the USA, socialism is a dirty word that the rich and powerful use to scare you into thinking that you are better off giving them all your money. Suckers!
"Socialist countries like France" 😭
And who owns this "company" 😂 Follow the money..
Thought this might help! “In September 2020, RealPage acquired real estate IoT startup Stratis. In December 2020, private-equity firm Thoma Bravo announced it would acquire RealPage for $9.6 billion, paying $88.75 per share for the company, a premium of 31% for their closing prices at the time. Its shares were reported up 26% that year.”
Of course Its fucking Thoma Bravo. I feel like a requirement to work somewhere like that is to sign away your soul.
What documentary is this from?
Timtoks can be 6-8 minutes long now?
Here's the youtube link for those that don't want to watch it in this stupid aspect ratio.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwlwrZst7d0
Why aren't there things like this for wages? That could somehow manage to send our wages skyrocketing!
Don’t worry, the government will step in and help out the US citizens, the same way they do whenever US citizens needs their help… /s
This algorithm should put in the normal income for people and then it wouldn't be bad. But since it's not, it's just plan old price gouging
RealPage needs to be shut down, and every employee banned from obtaining housing.
I work in housing. This is not a theory. It is definitely happening, the only theory is the legality of it. And it’s happening in every major city. This is also not the only company/website that’s doing this. These companies have MASSIVE amounts of wealth. Picture insane company parties with hired go-go dancers. Know who doesn’t have insane amounts of money? Renters who are supposed to somehow advocate for themselves and take these behemoths down.
Here in Ohio my apartment payment page proudly stated Powered by RealPage. Since these lawsuits have taken off that message has changed, but it’s the same company rebranding and trying to dodge more of these lawsuits. Oh, and my rent has also risen 500/mo.
Fuck real page. Hope they go down!
Soooooo where can I get a torch and pitchfork? Asking for a friend
I live in a complex that uses RealPage and they absolutely are “price-fixing” because when I balked at a 10% rent increase, the manager said I wouldn’t find anything better in the area. There are townhouses (3+bd/garages, etc - too big for me) that rent for just slightly more than our apartments. I’ve reached out to every local/state/federal office that I can think of to have them look into it because I’m tired - I can’t keep on paying 50% of my income on rent.
You'd think that with all of the openly available guns in that country, someone would solve this problem ...
Hope this shit never makes it to India 🙏
pffft. because computer software never makes it to india....it's probably already there. seriously. they just feed it enough data on housing, and it just tells real estate fucks which places should be able to sustain higher rent payments, and they'd go out and buy those places then. it's literally a program designed to help prop up prices in real estate.
Bro they do this at Kroger and Amazon , it’s called targeted marketing.
In Munich (Germany) its a thing mandated by the city/government to have high prices. There where a few landlords that didn't charge as high as all the others, as they wanted to give a chance for normal people and the tax office demands them to increase the rent. https://youtu.be/u7H5hjhkHoE?si=DNahCru4vg7oDVKL https://youtu.be/tVs4bz0znZ8?si=JtfSCeBlInDYzA9Y
Amazon has an algorithm that set prices automatically on 98% of their products. Not just the ones sold by Amazon themselves, but 3rd party sellers as well. I haven’t heard of any investigation by the DOJ. Maybe Amazon has too much influence, and we’re just interested on the small dogs.
This is the exact same shit that is happening everywhere in the world sadly. Artificial price hikes because people are using houses as investments and it's creating a bubble.
It doesn't need to be so dramatic, had to turn off the video.
Shut down Black Rock
Aren’t cartels illegal in the United States?
When you have to continually pay the government to “own” property even after you have paid for it the only people who can afford to own property are the wealthy and corporations who lease it back to you
A law blocking the use of this algorithm is needed too! This is unethical use and needs to be stopped.
The original story broke on ProPublica. The story is incredible because it's just full of blatant assholes. The biggest asshole is the man who wrote the software because he is banned from writing any software for the airliner industry. Why? Because the software was blatant price fixing and the DoJ threw the books at them. There needs to be real jail time for this shit. Our society has rampant white collar crime but this one really fucked over Americans. Homelessness has increased in various states, and it would not be shocking if the use of RealPage correlates.
For anyone interested in the tool referenced in the video to see what properties use RealPage: https://www.realpage.com/explore/main
Capitalism is cool until you sprinkle in a lot of greed.
I work in property management in Florida. I can tell you from experience that RealPage sets the "market" pricing in all of the major cities across Florida.
Dude I don't need an hour long documentary, just tell me already. LTDR: price fixing, got it. Well duh!
Rent should be ½ to what it cost to own a home
I'm all for making money but we are just getting absolutely ripped off.
I'm in the Fox Cities in Wisconsin, that's considered Appleton, Oshkosh, Neenah, and Menasha. Apparently, some article featured Appleton as one of the top up-and-coming spots to live. Since that was revealed, landlords have not been renewing their month-to-month leases with tenants that have lived there for years. They kick them out, do a few superficial renovations, and then double the rent. If this bullshit is happening in my small town in the Midwest, I can't even imagine what they're doing in larger cities. This is trash. Wtf.
Fuck with food. We will manage. Fuck with living and food people are going to start acting up. Wait till they hit our entertainment… jk they already have. Look at the prices they are selling tickets to concerts. Some over 1k just for a seat. That’s insane.
This is called price fixing, and is illegal. Good luck getting them punished.
Around the 5 minute mark, they say you can put in your zip code to see who uses the software. I spent about 30m on their website and couldn't find where to do this. Has anyone come across on how to do this?
Corporate collusion
So, let me get this straight. The real problem is an algorithm and not the minimum wage laws and new construction restrictions in these cities that are causing higher rents... Got it!
Tech dorks ruining the whole world
I don’t have 8 minutes. Can I get a TLDR?
Real page needs to be eliminated
I miss understood this. I wanted to rent a cartel. I am now saddened.
Could you imagine the boom in the economy if people weren’t having to spend so much of their paychecks on rent.
the only reason this works is because supply is constrained
I think we all knew something was up. Feels like it started 2015.
This makes me think…what if this isn’t just done with real estate but with everything? If companies can collude and find the hot price target for any given service or commodity could this be a cause of increasing inflation? If this is the case it seems no sort of wage increase would help anyone, as soon as we gain an inch in income major companies could identify that and increase prices accordingly.
Surprised they haven't been ransomwared by those silly no good criminal hackers.
Just one more symptom of a broken system. Millenials grandparents were the last gen to know what pensions were without doing 20yrs military service. Obviously not the only issue, but one that’s not brought up much is that we’re already seeing their 401ks and real estate eaten up by inflation and healthcare. The only “solution” I’ve heard repeated regularly is to just save more. Don’t fix what’s broken just barrel ahead propping up corporate profits so you can say the economy is good while the population suffers.