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I hope so, but if I were betting, I would bet that actually the s*** show will continue. Too many very rich people have too much money invested in real estate speculation, and you know they're going to pressure their friends in Washington to not take away their honey pot.

I could be wrong, I sure hope I'm wrong, but this doesn't feel like the climate where we can expect to see significant victories that would benefit the average person. Not yet. Maybe soon? I don't know.

In one news release, Realpage offered its property management clients the ability to outsource daily rent-setting and revenue oversight. “We believe in overseeing properties as though we own them ourselves,” the company said in a presentation that plaintiffs’ lawyers referenced in the lawsuit.

A leasing manager at a RealPage client said, “I knew [RealPage’s prices] were way too high, but [RealPage] barely budged” when the manager asked to deviate from the suggested rent.

An update to the software tracked not only clients’ acceptance rate, but also the identity of the landlords’ staff members who had requested a deviation from RealPage’s price, the lawsuit said. Compensation for some property management personnel was even tied to compliance with the company’s recommendations, it said.

The Washington lawsuit alleged that the system was designed to police compliance of the cartel. It cited RealPage training documents that urged clients to have the “discipline” to enact the software’s pricing suggestions 90% of the time or more. Training documents encouraged regional rental managers to beware of “‘rogue’ leasing agents who too frequently override” the software’s recommended prices. Rejections would also often trigger outreach from a RealPage pricing advisor, the suit said.

No, they don't have a point. The software is clearly created explicitly for the purpose of collusion for maximizing rent.

Landlords pay for this software to help them set "fair" rents.

If that's the goal, landlords would save so much money by calculating fair rent in some spreadsheet or such. Calculate how much their monthly costs are per building, divided by how many units, plus some percentages to set aside for emergencies and renovations... but we all know that's not the case.

I agree. I'm a capitalist but this seems, effectually, like price fixing to me.

The a few accusations that make this worse, and probably illegal if proven:

• This software doesn't just use public data. It uses the private data of multiple landlords who submit their private/proprietary data to be used by all the competitors.
• The software, and the company's contracts, prevent the landlords from actually deviating from the formula, through a combination of a hostile interface and contractual requirements.
• The software encourages landlords to do non-pricing activity, like taking units off the market, to feed into the algorithm for everyone else.

In this case, "algorithmic" really means "shifting responsibility to a computer".

I had an experience like this earlier this year, when I went to buy a car. There was part of the financing regarding the state Sales Tax that I didn't understand. When I asked their "finance manager" about it, he said that the computer spit out all the numbers and they pay a lot of money for that software so the numbers must be correct.

I almost stopped the deal right there, but I went home and googled the answer, and they were doing it correctly after all. The deal was pretty good so I still bought the car. Still, it amazes me that businesses don't feel the need to promote managers who actually understand finance because "the computer does all the hard math".