About a month ago, I was in Mount Pleasant and there was a large weekend event with many craft vendors and activism. There was a booth that fought for rights of renters, basically wanting to create a union for renters in the city.
After reading this article, it really hammers the idea of a renters union.
For the story that helped lead to these lawsuits, check this out: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
ProPublica has been incredible at doing a deep dive into some critical issues, and the depth of their investigation about Yieldstar is fascinating yet terrifying. It is well worth a read.
Ooo, even better! That is incredible and big props to propublica for the reporting. Thank you for sharing.
The loss of local journalism in cities across America is a real tragedy. The people don’t get quality that uncovers these issues. So this must be huge for them to chase down and publish this story.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"RealPage and the defendant landlords illegally colluded to artificially raise rents by participating in a centralized, anticompetitive scheme, causing District residents to pay millions of dollars above fair market prices,” Schwalb said in a release tied to the complaint.
RealPage and the property management firms utilizing their software were the subject of a class-action suit filed in the Southern District of California in October 2022, alleging the “cartel” of artificially inflating prices.
A developer who worked on YieldStar’s algorithm told ProPublica that rental leasing agents had “too much empathy” compared to the software’s pricing systems.
Its creation of “work groups” of would-be rival landlords could also invite antitrust scrutiny, a former federal prosecutor told ProPublica.
In response to ProPublica’s reporting, a RealPage representative said the firm used “aggregated market data from a variety of sources in a legally compliant manner.”
A slide from an internal Greystar presentation cited in the complaint suggested that “at least 95 percent” of RealPage prices should be used, as “Discipline of using revenue management increased more consistent outcomes.”
The original article contains 527 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
