U.S. landlords who use RealPage products to set prices on rental apartments are facing accusations of collusion.
  • A group of lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the United States
  • A complaint filed by Washington D.C.’s Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider
  • RealPage recommends prices for roughly 4.5 million housing units in the United States
  • RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions

A group of renters in the U.S. say their landlords are using software to deliver inflated rent hikes.

“We’ve been told as tenants by employees of Equity that the software takes empathy out of the equation. So they can charge whatever the software tells them to charge,” said Kevin Weller, a tenant at Portside Towers since 2021.

Tenants say the management started to increase prices substantially after giving renters concessions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    5 months ago

    Three thoughts.

    1. Sometimes I need / want to rent. Example, I had to repair the foundation of my home and needed a single family home to rent for my family while my home was being repaired for 6mo.

    2. Hotels / motels / inns are a pretty reasonable use case. People need temporary housing for travel.

    3. I don’t want to live in an area for more than 5 or 10 years, I want to rent. Buying a house is a huge fucking pain, and is always full of expensive surprises once you move and have the maintenance on you.

    I could go on, but IMHO, there are a LOT more reasons why renting is actually useful, and I might want someone else to be on the hook for the mortgage and maintenance.

    • JCreazy@midwest.socialEnglish
      12·
      5 months ago

      There will always be scenarios where renting is necessary but what I was getting at was it’s out of control.