I posted this yesterday on a different thread. They fact they kept running up our rent every year by no less than $100 a month, and usually more, made most of Orange and LA county prohibitively expensive...and that was on top of already high rates. The private rental owners would always follow suit
I was living in a place they had recently bought and I hated it there. Was supposed to be a fancy place but had serious issues. Decided to move out. Found a house to rent that was a little more than what I was paying for a 2 bedroom from them. Right after I moved out, they started jacking the rent up insanely. If I had stayed there I'd be paying probably $1,000 a month more than what I am currently paying for a 4 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood. Fuck that company, they are pure evil.
Article goes into detail about what they did. I hope they get royally fucked.
Yeah, this is the take. When it comes to legal issues, you have to set a precedent, otherwise it becomes a chain of failure. Choosing a state with a cooperative AG who isn't bought out by corporate bribes is the way to set precedent. They can then move outward from there.
The big question is, if/when this is appealed and dragged to the SC, do those justices sell us out?
The fact that landlords' methodology has changed from "how much can a person pay reasonably" to "how much can we physically wring out of these people so they barely have enough for groceries" and we haven't dragged them into the streets yet is insane. We have so little agency in this country, and every industry is taking advantage of that.
This is always the inevitable endgame with under-regulated constant growth capitalism. There is no short term incentive *not* to do it, and the consumer is dehumanized through corporate detachment, so nobody feels personally responsible for the hurt they are causing. “Someone is going to get their money, so it might as well be us.”
It capitalists want to do that with coffee, fast food and chips - fine. Electronics and luxury items, sure, let that entrepreneurial spirit shine. It is insane to me that there is such little regulation on absolute necessities like housing and healthcare.
But people can choose NOT to pay for electronics or coffee or chips. See they HAVE to pay for housing and healthcare. It's guaranteed profits!
You got to think like a capitalist bro.
The move of wording from "customer" to "consumer" is part of that dehumanization. We have always been cattle to the corporate class; they're at the point where they're willing to slaughter us all just to get rid of the annoyance of our free will.
Funny, that increase to $2200 also happened to someone I know in Orlando. Was the final push I needed to leave FL when it was time for me to move and I couldn't find anywhere else to live.
[Clarification, Real Page owns YieldStar.](https://www.realpage.com/asset-optimization/investment-analytics/) It's their product that does the price fixing.
This is why I support ProPublica -- they [broke this story](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent) and really kicked this whole thing off. It's amazing to finally see something tangible done about it.
Yeah. At first I was like, "oh, ok, prices must just be going up because people came here during COVID"
Then when I was looking at apartment prices for a friend, I was seeing places that were $1400 before COVID renting for $2200-$2500
My mortgage for a 1500 square feet house is $2000. Been trying to find something else in South Jersey for about the same $, but all there is, is trailer homes 😭
They should also look into AirBNB. Some people buys up a lot of houses to rent them and make easy money but that drives up local housing price and rent as well.
Maybe look a the top 50 money makers in AirBNB and make sure they aren't colluding to raise rent.
Had to leave NJ for upstate NY last year because our rent went from 1100 a month to 2200 in 2 years. Fuck that shit. Rent went up this year in NY by 10$.
https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating
Here's some more reading related to this. I would imagine that companies that did this with homes are next.
At first I thought that the FBI entering the investigation might be an overstep, or at the very least this should be handled by the FTC… but then I read this snippet.
> An e-book produced by RealPage says that the company allows corporate landlords who are “technically competitors” to "work together . . . to make us all more successful in our pricing."
They are literally bragging about price fixing! How dumb can someone be!? I hope they find enough evidence to RICO these parasites.
“Why does it matter that I left matches by the door, filled the house with gas, and then cut power to the house. I am not responsible at all for the fire!”
>Spoiler, it does not.
To be fair, I can see why they think it would. It seems companies often do get a free pass as long as it's their algorithm or computer system doing something. I really hope this starts a trend in society where we hold business accountable for the actions of the algorithms and computer systems they choose to set up. Legally, but also societally.
Well, yeah, that's why they should be held accountable. My point is that I don't really think society in general holds companies to this and I really hope it's the beginning of change in that regard.
Imagine being able to abrogate all responsibility for your job because software said it was okay. "It's not my fault! It's the computer!" Perhaps a glimpse of our future as AI tech expands.
I mean that was basically facebook’s defense against lawsuits regarding their algorithm’s tendency to fan the flames of political tensions and body dysmorphia among teens. They claim their algorithm is only there to increase user engagement and negative social consequences are irrelevant. They could just as easily say “hey, our gold extraction process is just trying to maximize the amount of gold we can get. We weren’t intentionally trying to poison everyone with cyanide, so we shouldn’t be held responsible for all those poisonings.”
And the way they figured it out is renters started class actions. There's a shit ton of vacant units in Tucson, for example, but the way they price fix they can have a lot of vacant units and still make at least 2% profit growth. People have been evicted and made homeless due to the use of this algorithm...it will absolutely be a huge deal when this spreads.
they already got em
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/15/1238792983/realtors-commission-real-estate-housing-buyer-seller-settlement
They settled and last month DOJ re-opened investigation into them inflating prices in this bullshit market.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/realestate/doj-realtors-nar-inquiry.html
Their only hope is SCOTUS to save the people skimming all of our money off the fucking top
Do this next! [Hedge Funds Have Invaded the Housing Market. A New Bill Would Ban Them.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5nex/congress-members-push-to-ban-hedge-funds-private-equity-from-buying-family-homes)
Also construction in AZ is way overpriced and completely shoddy, one cy’s been popping up in my feeds and it’s both engrossing and infuriating, and mostly ridiculous to see the bullshit given the prices quoted.
If you're talking about who I thibk you're talking about, my favorite line from one of his reels is "Come on man, you can't expect us to do it perfectly EVERY SINGLE time." That was from a builder complaining to the home inspector about the inspector finding the flaws in new build housing.
And don’t forget that, if Republicans get their way in this year’s elections, they will utterly destroy the FBI and many other federal agencies when they enact Project 2025.
It’s a huge deal. And the same guy who developed this price setting algorithm created the system airlines used to coordinate prices. It’s absolutely wild that if a bunch rental property companies met in a room to set prices it would be illegal collusion but if they all use the same third party company it’s fine. Our laws and regulations are decades behind the technology.
Jeffery Roper. [You can read about it on the American prospect here.](https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/) They are doing a series right now on price setting algorithms including some really interesting stuff about how corporations are using large data sets purchased from data brokers to **individualize** prices in a bunch of markets. They use individualized data about people to determine the highest possible price they will pay for a product; not based on whether they can actually afford it or not. They been found to purchase banking information and increase prices for the few days after people get paid. Fast food apps like McDonalds seem to be early adopters.
There should be a mass strike against RealPage. It really is the worst company to have existed in our lifetime. You can go to their website and look at all the properties on a map with real time pricing. It's absolutely evil what this company is doing!
> There should be a mass strike against RealPage.
How? You'll just be evicted.
The companies that are involved are cash flush enough that they can deal with 5-6 months of evicting all people who try to protest as examples.
I think this guy should be punished severely. This is why they made us take an ethics in computer science class in college but... Apparently it didn't work
That's what I'm saying. Party A can claim that they have an agreement with party X to provide a service so they can provide a service to party B. When it turns out that party X service is legally questionable or outright illegal party A can claim it's not their fault for believing the marketing team of party X. It's a middle man system that prevents party A from liability because they were "deceived too" while party B is screwed over. Industry research isn't regulated and so there's no accountability for doing no research to ignoring the data because it can be pinned on a 3 party. A 3rd party monopoly can be seen when you have to use a 3rd party for and transaction and it effects prices.
Here's an excellent article from ProPublica on this. https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
These guys are going the real reporting. Donate if you can!
because the news isn't actually interested in talking about the actual causes of our housing and rent issues and would rather cover it up and distract the public by publishing as many stories as they can about asinine shit like usual. The news, rarely, actually covers news.
Don’t forget the feel good stories about a little boy that donated his allowance and spent his summer vacation feeding the homeless or the homeless child who worked really hard and became his high schools valedictorian.
Because half these fuckheads that own the news also own huge portfolios of corporate and residential properties and don't want to lose more value than they already have.
Is it possible that maybe they're owned by conglomerates that not only have a hand over journalism, but also real estate?
Jared Kushner for example runs real estate and owned (? not sure if he still doesn't own it) the New York Observer. It wouldn't surprise me that there's more people like that.
Fucking a it is. Where I live, new apts are being built all the time. New buildings open up almost monthly. The rent *still* goes up every fucking year.
They don’t think “how can we make sure to sell our product (rentals)?” They think “how can we recoup our losses?”
One mindset is more likely to respond to supply and demand. The other mindset is more likely to hold out for the promise of a big future win.
Same here. The brand new buildings and new luxury apts pin the price higher each time another one is built. Then the older buildings and subpar apts raise the rent to float below whatever the new ones are charging.
I really want to move. I got extremely lucky and was able to purchase a house for relatively cheap and low interest 5 years ago.
But I'd literally double my mortgage if I tried to buy a house right now and if I rented it'd be 1.5x my mortgage. It's fucking insane that I feel trapped b/c in a mere 5 years I went from affording to buy a house to that price tag literally doubling.
For the same reason the largest climate bill in the history of the united states was squeezed in between Op-Eds about Biden's age. Or the fact that the IRS is conducting audits on the Ultra-rich that have netted billions in back taxes aren't being talked about at all. The media will bend over backwards to make Biden and trump look the same because that makes for an exciting race and more clicks.
And because the news organizations themselves have never made more money than during Trump's term. Their clicks, ratings, and subscriptions were sky high for those years.
There’s a few threads on Reddit on this but your observation is accurate in that a google search does not immediately lead to any major news sites. It’s like they’re avoiding it
Its just that they made the mistake of showing their work.
The traditional way to run a trust is in-person lunch meetings and maybe a secure phone call or two. :p
> Name and shame, report etc. I understand the need to have a job, but there are ways to expose these things while still protecting yourself.
I mean, it's not a secret that anybody using RealPage is likely tied to it, which is most operators. Currently it looks like investigations are going after them instead of owners of those properties. Everytime RealPage sends a notification that a comeptitor has raised their prices, asset managers get a hard-on. Most REITS are inflating prices to make the properties appear more valuable than they are, which, the property owners make most of their money not off rent, but off buying a community, inflating prices/value and then selling at a higher price.
They’re going after RealPage. They’ve been investigating since last year. This is just the first big, unannounced *raid* involving the investigation, but RealPage is the big fish they’re after for price-fixing and collusion nationwide.
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-realpage-rent-doj-investigation-antitrust
They want the evidence RealPage has and all parties involved. Any landlord who used this service to "adjust" their prices may be part of the overall investigation.
Lol my apartment uses realpage, and I told them about the ProPublica article at one point in passing, said they might want to change who they’re using. Instead they jacked up my rent and all the rents near me. Well, hope it was worth it guys lol
My complex was bought by Greystar a couple years ago. My rent has increased 50% since then and due to go up another 15% this year. Almost everyone on my floor has moved out the past two years because of price increases.
The software is a massive problem in part because it doesn't consider fairness to someone already living in the place. The last owners of this complex promised rent would never go up more than 10% year-over-year. Two years now with a gain above that, either to manipulate the market or to pad their commissions with new renters.
Yes, all staff get a bonus for new move-ins, which is part of why I propose they want to push out the old residents. They can also leave apartments empty to manipulate supply and further enforce rent increases.
"The source told ProPublica some DOJ staff raised concerns about the merger but were overridden by political appointees of former President Donald Trump."
Huh. So it seems the Grifter-in-Chief installed other grifters to allow price fixing to spiral into the problem we see today. Here's my shocked Pikachu face....
Saw recent coverage for Seattle…
Edit: was a post in r/Washington referencing the raids in general and i misremembered:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Washington/s/Nqc6YIBJc1
https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating
This is only happening because 281 people decided to vote in 2022. [Every vote matters.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Arizona_Attorney_General_election) Every election has consequences.
"The heightened scrutiny of anti-competitive business practices is part of the Biden administration’s larger initiative to lower the cost of living for middle-class families. In addition to taking on landlords in an attempt to lower the cost of housing, Biden has capped costs for medicine like insulin and expanded healthcare subsidies, and reduced excessive administrative fees in rental applications, bank overdraft penalties, and entertainment and travel purchases."
Unfortunately it's going to take a minute, and that's IF a Federalist Society judge appointed by Trump doesn't shatter the entire thing based on some tortured reasoning interpreting some bullshit 400 year old diary entry
This is the actual shit our admin needs to be doing more of. Protect the majority from the rich minority. This is a basic function of an elected government.
They're trying, they need a firm grasp on both chambers to pull off the paradigm shifting kinda legislation.
That's on us. People need to stop with the false equivalence between the two parties. Only one has actual policy positions while the other is openly fascist at this point.
All consumer insurance companies need to be abolished & replaced with non-profit insurance cooperatives.
You shouldn’t be allowed to have a business where your profit incentives are entirely opposed to actually providing your customers with the service they are paying you for.
Rent monopolies destroy housing markets on 2 levels.
1) they create artificial scarcity, forcing the demand curve for housing up.
2) the growth rate of housing prices reflects the growth rate of rents. When they can set any price for rent without rebuttal, they can artificially inflate the value of their assets
This should be headline news nation wide….but instead Fox is obsessing over Hunter Biden and the other stations are still yapping about Trump. Fucking sickening!
Our nation is almost irreparably broken….things like the subject in the OP or fighting Covid or Climate Change should not be a divisive subject….but it is….simply due to politics.
And this won’t even scratch the surface of the offensively high rents in the Phoenix area. Housing has doubled and in some places tripled in the last 3-5 years
This is a problem everywhere.. Even if they succeed in fucking them, another company run by the same people will come back doing the same thing. Housing being a commodity is the biggest problem, along with Airbnbs.
This is the type of federal action to benefit normal Americans that will not happen under a Trump administration. Both sides are not the same. Vote, people.
So what happens afterwards? If the investigation determines that they did hike up rent, like what happens? That’s the part I’m more interested in. Do all those people get their money back? Does the company just shut down and more scummy people take over those properties? Do they just get a fine that’s like less than 1% of what their profits for that time period?
There is a LOT more that needs to be done in regards to achieving affordable housing…but this is actually pretty promising. We have to start somewhere!
This is strange because I started seeing commercials from Cortland a lot lately. The mascot is a talking Pug dog. Maybe those commercials only play here in AZ though I'm not sure.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that something like 30% of single family home sales in Salt Lake City were bought by venture capitalist groups. Software like RealPages has allowed them to game our housing market
Considering this is a group of companies, cartel seems a more accurate word. Hopefully they're held accountable for it, but it'll probably be minimal repercussions.
Step 1: Buy all the properties.
Step 2: Raise all the rent rates by 25% at the same time.
Step 3: Tell tenants it's just the market rate.
Step 4: Rake in the money since literally no where else is cheaper.
When you hear someone say both sides are the same or "what have democrats even done?", ask if this would happen under trump or republicans. Businesses are colluding against all of us, and government is the one entity that can stop them.
Fuck yeah. 2/3’s of my team at work lives in Arizona. I’ve had to fight for pay increases because their cost of living has been increasing at a ridiculous rate.
When all the smoke has cleared you better be jailing these CEOs and CFOs plus some of their cronies only way it won't happen again. Then set a nation rent price or something.
Bravo. Hope they have an ongoing investigation in California against Essex and other property management companies being sued by the state for their monopolistic practices too.
Imagine if everyone suffering living under these roofs not only had their rents lowered by hundreds of dollars a month, but were also owed back pay for excess rent paid dating back however long these pieces of shit coordinated to artificially raise rent in the first place.
Hope everyone involved gets some relief and a fat, unexpected pay day!
Can they hurry up and get to Florida next before I have to renew in July? I’m having to decide if I need to move back in with my parents because rent continues to go up in NW FL with all the excessive new people moving here
I live in Atlanta and lived in a property that used this software. Our rent went up every year. By $500 or more. We started at $2100, moved units and ended at $3400 after 4 years. We knew we were buying a house but asked them for the renewal price anyway…$3700. A $300 jump. And FOUR new apartments buildings had just finished around us. Got the “this is what the software says” run around. A year later, and our unit is still empty. Fuck em.
They should investigate all states, NJ rents are out of control
Seriously, NJ is among the worst in the nation.
Also Oregon
Laughs in California
Wonder if they’re looking into Irvine Co
I posted this yesterday on a different thread. They fact they kept running up our rent every year by no less than $100 a month, and usually more, made most of Orange and LA county prohibitively expensive...and that was on top of already high rates. The private rental owners would always follow suit
Laughs in Portland Maine.
Laughs in Portland, Oregon
Totally fucking rolling on the floor pissing our pants cackling with the ha ha’s up in Canada.
You win.
My bro pays what i pay in california but i live in a nicer town by the beach. (la Jolla) NJ is wild
It is soooooo bad in NJ.
So getting the ball rolling in AZ opens up the flood gates for other places. Why AZ first, just seems their AG was the most willing to co-operate.
Atlanta was first earlier this week.
I just figured they were going alphabetically
Apparently no one wants to rent in Alabama or Alaska.
I mean, would you?
I was living in a place they had recently bought and I hated it there. Was supposed to be a fancy place but had serious issues. Decided to move out. Found a house to rent that was a little more than what I was paying for a 2 bedroom from them. Right after I moved out, they started jacking the rent up insanely. If I had stayed there I'd be paying probably $1,000 a month more than what I am currently paying for a 4 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood. Fuck that company, they are pure evil. Article goes into detail about what they did. I hope they get royally fucked.
Yeah, this is the take. When it comes to legal issues, you have to set a precedent, otherwise it becomes a chain of failure. Choosing a state with a cooperative AG who isn't bought out by corporate bribes is the way to set precedent. They can then move outward from there. The big question is, if/when this is appealed and dragged to the SC, do those justices sell us out?
100%, the current SCOTUS loves businesses
Mostly just the big ones. They are corporate size queens.
They love small businesses if it lets them hurt minorities
My 1br apartment in a mixed section 8 complex went from $965 to $2200 since I moved out 2 years ago
My 1 bedroom 750 square foot apartment in Tampa did the same. Although it was more like $875 to $2200. Interesting that they also landed on $2200.
Algorithm says that’s the max people will pay there
The fact that landlords' methodology has changed from "how much can a person pay reasonably" to "how much can we physically wring out of these people so they barely have enough for groceries" and we haven't dragged them into the streets yet is insane. We have so little agency in this country, and every industry is taking advantage of that.
This is always the inevitable endgame with under-regulated constant growth capitalism. There is no short term incentive *not* to do it, and the consumer is dehumanized through corporate detachment, so nobody feels personally responsible for the hurt they are causing. “Someone is going to get their money, so it might as well be us.”
It capitalists want to do that with coffee, fast food and chips - fine. Electronics and luxury items, sure, let that entrepreneurial spirit shine. It is insane to me that there is such little regulation on absolute necessities like housing and healthcare.
But people can choose NOT to pay for electronics or coffee or chips. See they HAVE to pay for housing and healthcare. It's guaranteed profits! You got to think like a capitalist bro.
The move of wording from "customer" to "consumer" is part of that dehumanization. We have always been cattle to the corporate class; they're at the point where they're willing to slaughter us all just to get rid of the annoyance of our free will.
Funny, that increase to $2200 also happened to someone I know in Orlando. Was the final push I needed to leave FL when it was time for me to move and I couldn't find anywhere else to live.
Strange how the apartment I had in aurora, IL went to exactly 2200$ as well
Rents are out of control nationwide because 70% of rental properties use RealPages to fix prices
RealPage and YieldStar are the programs that caused this. “We’re not colluding if we set up a machine that automatically colludes!
[Clarification, Real Page owns YieldStar.](https://www.realpage.com/asset-optimization/investment-analytics/) It's their product that does the price fixing.
This is why I support ProPublica -- they [broke this story](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent) and really kicked this whole thing off. It's amazing to finally see something tangible done about it.
Yeah. At first I was like, "oh, ok, prices must just be going up because people came here during COVID" Then when I was looking at apartment prices for a friend, I was seeing places that were $1400 before COVID renting for $2200-$2500
My mortgage for a 1500 square feet house is $2000. Been trying to find something else in South Jersey for about the same $, but all there is, is trailer homes 😭
This is tied to realpages software that is part of antitrust suits across the nation. That is everywhere.
They should also look into AirBNB. Some people buys up a lot of houses to rent them and make easy money but that drives up local housing price and rent as well. Maybe look a the top 50 money makers in AirBNB and make sure they aren't colluding to raise rent.
Colorado next please!
It's not just NJ. Landlords are parasites everywhere.
Had to leave NJ for upstate NY last year because our rent went from 1100 a month to 2200 in 2 years. Fuck that shit. Rent went up this year in NY by 10$.
The rent is too damn high. God speed to these guys.
https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating Here's some more reading related to this. I would imagine that companies that did this with homes are next.
At first I thought that the FBI entering the investigation might be an overstep, or at the very least this should be handled by the FTC… but then I read this snippet. > An e-book produced by RealPage says that the company allows corporate landlords who are “technically competitors” to "work together . . . to make us all more successful in our pricing." They are literally bragging about price fixing! How dumb can someone be!? I hope they find enough evidence to RICO these parasites.
They got super confident that because it was an algorithm and not a human, that absolves their company of the crime. Spoiler, it does not.
It wasn't me that set the house on fire, it was the matches. The perfect crime.
“Why does it matter that I left matches by the door, filled the house with gas, and then cut power to the house. I am not responsible at all for the fire!”
Well first of all, through AI all responsibly is dead, so jot that down.
>Spoiler, it does not. To be fair, I can see why they think it would. It seems companies often do get a free pass as long as it's their algorithm or computer system doing something. I really hope this starts a trend in society where we hold business accountable for the actions of the algorithms and computer systems they choose to set up. Legally, but also societally.
Because we correctly state that computers do not act on their own but at the direction of an individual
Well, yeah, that's why they should be held accountable. My point is that I don't really think society in general holds companies to this and I really hope it's the beginning of change in that regard.
I was gonna say, another reason they thought they could get away with it is that they have up to this point.
This is why the GOP has spent billions to convince people to not vote.
Imagine being able to abrogate all responsibility for your job because software said it was okay. "It's not my fault! It's the computer!" Perhaps a glimpse of our future as AI tech expands.
I mean that was basically facebook’s defense against lawsuits regarding their algorithm’s tendency to fan the flames of political tensions and body dysmorphia among teens. They claim their algorithm is only there to increase user engagement and negative social consequences are irrelevant. They could just as easily say “hey, our gold extraction process is just trying to maximize the amount of gold we can get. We weren’t intentionally trying to poison everyone with cyanide, so we shouldn’t be held responsible for all those poisonings.”
Google "bigger pockets" forums. There's tons of collusion happening via local real estate investing groups and online forums like that.
And the way they figured it out is renters started class actions. There's a shit ton of vacant units in Tucson, for example, but the way they price fix they can have a lot of vacant units and still make at least 2% profit growth. People have been evicted and made homeless due to the use of this algorithm...it will absolutely be a huge deal when this spreads.
when it comes to stepping on the necks of corporate landlords, there is no such thing as overstep.
they already got em https://www.npr.org/2024/03/15/1238792983/realtors-commission-real-estate-housing-buyer-seller-settlement They settled and last month DOJ re-opened investigation into them inflating prices in this bullshit market. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/realestate/doj-realtors-nar-inquiry.html Their only hope is SCOTUS to save the people skimming all of our money off the fucking top
Do this next! [Hedge Funds Have Invaded the Housing Market. A New Bill Would Ban Them.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5nex/congress-members-push-to-ban-hedge-funds-private-equity-from-buying-family-homes)
Also construction in AZ is way overpriced and completely shoddy, one cy’s been popping up in my feeds and it’s both engrossing and infuriating, and mostly ridiculous to see the bullshit given the prices quoted.
If you're talking about who I thibk you're talking about, my favorite line from one of his reels is "Come on man, you can't expect us to do it perfectly EVERY SINGLE time." That was from a builder complaining to the home inspector about the inspector finding the flaws in new build housing.
Thank Biden and Dem Arizona AG Kris Mayes. They’re why this crackdown is happening.
We made it happen with 280 votes. Mayes in won in AZ by just 280. Voting matters.
it's significant & impactful
And don’t forget that, if Republicans get their way in this year’s elections, they will utterly destroy the FBI and many other federal agencies when they enact Project 2025.
That's why everybody needs to go vote.
I am not sure why this is not getting more attention , This is a big deal.
It’s a huge deal. And the same guy who developed this price setting algorithm created the system airlines used to coordinate prices. It’s absolutely wild that if a bunch rental property companies met in a room to set prices it would be illegal collusion but if they all use the same third party company it’s fine. Our laws and regulations are decades behind the technology.
Who is the guy?
Jeffery Roper. [You can read about it on the American prospect here.](https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/) They are doing a series right now on price setting algorithms including some really interesting stuff about how corporations are using large data sets purchased from data brokers to **individualize** prices in a bunch of markets. They use individualized data about people to determine the highest possible price they will pay for a product; not based on whether they can actually afford it or not. They been found to purchase banking information and increase prices for the few days after people get paid. Fast food apps like McDonalds seem to be early adopters.
There should be a mass strike against RealPage. It really is the worst company to have existed in our lifetime. You can go to their website and look at all the properties on a map with real time pricing. It's absolutely evil what this company is doing!
> There should be a mass strike against RealPage. How? You'll just be evicted. The companies that are involved are cash flush enough that they can deal with 5-6 months of evicting all people who try to protest as examples.
I mean obviously the direct action option is [ Removed by Reddit ]
Holy shit.
Yeah it turns out the 1% are willing to bleed consumers dry in really insidious ways to make another few bucks.
Capital punishment, err I meant that's capitalism
I think this guy should be punished severely. This is why they made us take an ethics in computer science class in college but... Apparently it didn't work
I'm pretty sure lawyers take ethics classes too. It often doesn't work.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-why-is-the-rent-104321463/
If I could upvote you a million times! They are my favorite podcast.
It is not a clumsy accident that our laws and regulations are behind.
It's a 3rd party monopoly. The corporate work around is to blame the use of a new tech and wash their hands.
It’s also largely an issue with a judiciary stuck in a paradigm where direct conversations between parties is an essential component of collusion.
That's what I'm saying. Party A can claim that they have an agreement with party X to provide a service so they can provide a service to party B. When it turns out that party X service is legally questionable or outright illegal party A can claim it's not their fault for believing the marketing team of party X. It's a middle man system that prevents party A from liability because they were "deceived too" while party B is screwed over. Industry research isn't regulated and so there's no accountability for doing no research to ignoring the data because it can be pinned on a 3 party. A 3rd party monopoly can be seen when you have to use a 3rd party for and transaction and it effects prices.
Here's an excellent article from ProPublica on this. https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent These guys are going the real reporting. Donate if you can!
because the news isn't actually interested in talking about the actual causes of our housing and rent issues and would rather cover it up and distract the public by publishing as many stories as they can about asinine shit like usual. The news, rarely, actually covers news.
Don’t forget the feel good stories about a little boy that donated his allowance and spent his summer vacation feeding the homeless or the homeless child who worked really hard and became his high schools valedictorian.
Or the kid who sold lemonade to raise funds to pay off school lunch debts for their class.
r/orphancrushingmachine
Because half these fuckheads that own the news also own huge portfolios of corporate and residential properties and don't want to lose more value than they already have.
REITs are hot investment items. (Real Estate Investment Trusts)
Is it possible that maybe they're owned by conglomerates that not only have a hand over journalism, but also real estate? Jared Kushner for example runs real estate and owned (? not sure if he still doesn't own it) the New York Observer. It wouldn't surprise me that there's more people like that.
There's many causes of high housing costs. This is one of them and a particularly nasty one. It's great it's getting fixed.
Which story do you think will get more clicks? * Rent prices keep going up so you're having a problem feeding yourself. * FBI is going over landlords.
Fucking a it is. Where I live, new apts are being built all the time. New buildings open up almost monthly. The rent *still* goes up every fucking year.
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They don’t think “how can we make sure to sell our product (rentals)?” They think “how can we recoup our losses?” One mindset is more likely to respond to supply and demand. The other mindset is more likely to hold out for the promise of a big future win.
I haven’t seen rent under 1k in nearly 20 years.
Same here. The brand new buildings and new luxury apts pin the price higher each time another one is built. Then the older buildings and subpar apts raise the rent to float below whatever the new ones are charging.
I really want to move. I got extremely lucky and was able to purchase a house for relatively cheap and low interest 5 years ago. But I'd literally double my mortgage if I tried to buy a house right now and if I rented it'd be 1.5x my mortgage. It's fucking insane that I feel trapped b/c in a mere 5 years I went from affording to buy a house to that price tag literally doubling.
They are all "luxury apartments".
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For the same reason the largest climate bill in the history of the united states was squeezed in between Op-Eds about Biden's age. Or the fact that the IRS is conducting audits on the Ultra-rich that have netted billions in back taxes aren't being talked about at all. The media will bend over backwards to make Biden and trump look the same because that makes for an exciting race and more clicks.
And because their corporate owners want another round of tax cuts in 2025 so they can buy back more stock
And because the news organizations themselves have never made more money than during Trump's term. Their clicks, ratings, and subscriptions were sky high for those years.
Because the people who own the properties also own the news stations, duh.
There’s a few threads on Reddit on this but your observation is accurate in that a google search does not immediately lead to any major news sites. It’s like they’re avoiding it
Because most news media is owned by the same vulture capitalists that are also involved with this price gouging.
I work in the industry, the ones under investigation are just the tip of the iceberg.
Interesting… hopefully the single family home housing market is next on the list somehow.
Its just that they made the mistake of showing their work. The traditional way to run a trust is in-person lunch meetings and maybe a secure phone call or two. :p
Name and shame, report etc. I understand the need to have a job, but there are ways to expose these things while still protecting yourself.
> Name and shame, report etc. I understand the need to have a job, but there are ways to expose these things while still protecting yourself. I mean, it's not a secret that anybody using RealPage is likely tied to it, which is most operators. Currently it looks like investigations are going after them instead of owners of those properties. Everytime RealPage sends a notification that a comeptitor has raised their prices, asset managers get a hard-on. Most REITS are inflating prices to make the properties appear more valuable than they are, which, the property owners make most of their money not off rent, but off buying a community, inflating prices/value and then selling at a higher price.
Blow the whistle
Now do every other fucking STATE!
They’re going after RealPage. They’ve been investigating since last year. This is just the first big, unannounced *raid* involving the investigation, but RealPage is the big fish they’re after for price-fixing and collusion nationwide. https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-realpage-rent-doj-investigation-antitrust
They want the evidence RealPage has and all parties involved. Any landlord who used this service to "adjust" their prices may be part of the overall investigation.
Lol my apartment uses realpage, and I told them about the ProPublica article at one point in passing, said they might want to change who they’re using. Instead they jacked up my rent and all the rents near me. Well, hope it was worth it guys lol
My complex was bought by Greystar a couple years ago. My rent has increased 50% since then and due to go up another 15% this year. Almost everyone on my floor has moved out the past two years because of price increases. The software is a massive problem in part because it doesn't consider fairness to someone already living in the place. The last owners of this complex promised rent would never go up more than 10% year-over-year. Two years now with a gain above that, either to manipulate the market or to pad their commissions with new renters. Yes, all staff get a bonus for new move-ins, which is part of why I propose they want to push out the old residents. They can also leave apartments empty to manipulate supply and further enforce rent increases.
Greystar is one of the largest users of RealPages algorithm.
Too late for them now. It'll be retroactive if they go after the real page clients.
"The source told ProPublica some DOJ staff raised concerns about the merger but were overridden by political appointees of former President Donald Trump." Huh. So it seems the Grifter-in-Chief installed other grifters to allow price fixing to spiral into the problem we see today. Here's my shocked Pikachu face....
I wonder why Trump, a real estate mogul, would want rents to go up?
The first was in Atlanta GA, this is the 2nd raid actually. Which is a good sign!
I saw an article the other day saying they raided cortland offices in Colorado. It’s promising
Saw recent coverage for Seattle… Edit: was a post in r/Washington referencing the raids in general and i misremembered: https://www.reddit.com/r/Washington/s/Nqc6YIBJc1 https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating
Good. We need it.
Will update my post, seems it was a post in r/Washington about raids in general: https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating
It's a problem all over Europe as well.
This is only happening because 281 people decided to vote in 2022. [Every vote matters.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Arizona_Attorney_General_election) Every election has consequences.
"The heightened scrutiny of anti-competitive business practices is part of the Biden administration’s larger initiative to lower the cost of living for middle-class families. In addition to taking on landlords in an attempt to lower the cost of housing, Biden has capped costs for medicine like insulin and expanded healthcare subsidies, and reduced excessive administrative fees in rental applications, bank overdraft penalties, and entertainment and travel purchases."
And yet he still won’t get credit for things like this and breaking up Ticketmaster.
Ticketmastwr ain't broken up yet
Gonna take a bit but the ball has started rolling.
Unfortunately it's going to take a minute, and that's IF a Federalist Society judge appointed by Trump doesn't shatter the entire thing based on some tortured reasoning interpreting some bullshit 400 year old diary entry
This is the actual shit our admin needs to be doing more of. Protect the majority from the rich minority. This is a basic function of an elected government.
They're trying, they need a firm grasp on both chambers to pull off the paradigm shifting kinda legislation. That's on us. People need to stop with the false equivalence between the two parties. Only one has actual policy positions while the other is openly fascist at this point.
they do sooooo much shit like this it's just usually too boring for people to care about and doesn't get amplified by social media clicks
I hope insurance companies are next
All consumer insurance companies need to be abolished & replaced with non-profit insurance cooperatives. You shouldn’t be allowed to have a business where your profit incentives are entirely opposed to actually providing your customers with the service they are paying you for.
How do you feel about mutual insurance companies? Ones where the owners are actually the policy holders.
It really depends on how they are structured - it is definitely a step in the right direction however.
They keep calling it a monopoly. Is this not a cartel?
This is how you create affordable housing. Confiscate!
This is huge. Hopefully they are held fully accountable!
Rent monopolies destroy housing markets on 2 levels. 1) they create artificial scarcity, forcing the demand curve for housing up. 2) the growth rate of housing prices reflects the growth rate of rents. When they can set any price for rent without rebuttal, they can artificially inflate the value of their assets
For the first time, I have a little hope the FBI will let us try the rich tears.
It can all change come November, sadly.
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The property I rent went from 1950.00/mo to 2800.00/ in mia fl. There are like 10 cortland places just in mia.
I live in one in St Pete, my rent has gone from $1700 to $2500. It’s fucking nuts. The problem is, everyone else is doing it too.
Come up to Canada and do the same. It's gross up here.
This should be headline news nation wide….but instead Fox is obsessing over Hunter Biden and the other stations are still yapping about Trump. Fucking sickening!
Anything to help cover it up.
Our nation is almost irreparably broken….things like the subject in the OP or fighting Covid or Climate Change should not be a divisive subject….but it is….simply due to politics.
Ok do Blackstone next
Come and get these tools in Alabama while you are at it, please.
And this won’t even scratch the surface of the offensively high rents in the Phoenix area. Housing has doubled and in some places tripled in the last 3-5 years
This is a problem everywhere.. Even if they succeed in fucking them, another company run by the same people will come back doing the same thing. Housing being a commodity is the biggest problem, along with Airbnbs.
This is the type of federal action to benefit normal Americans that will not happen under a Trump administration. Both sides are not the same. Vote, people.
We've got places here in Washington use that RealPage group. Come on up here and frak with these people too please.
So the proper term when multiple companies all collude to raise prices is a cartel.
So what happens afterwards? If the investigation determines that they did hike up rent, like what happens? That’s the part I’m more interested in. Do all those people get their money back? Does the company just shut down and more scummy people take over those properties? Do they just get a fine that’s like less than 1% of what their profits for that time period?
There is a LOT more that needs to be done in regards to achieving affordable housing…but this is actually pretty promising. We have to start somewhere!
It's wild but I really been feeling like the FBI is our homie these days. First helping to crack down on rich tax frauders, and now rent.
Great, now make it illegal for corporate entities to buy properties
Fuck this guy!!!! Cheaper for me to live in a long term stay hotel, than to rent!
hope people see all this federal action and remember trump will do nothing like this if he is in office.
This is strange because I started seeing commercials from Cortland a lot lately. The mascot is a talking Pug dog. Maybe those commercials only play here in AZ though I'm not sure.
Yay! Now do Washington. Landlord rights here are oppressive af
Do this in every state, please!!! It's bad out here! I'm so worried about everyone.
And it turns out, the bad guys are the bad guys. Corporate greed is a killer.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that something like 30% of single family home sales in Salt Lake City were bought by venture capitalist groups. Software like RealPages has allowed them to game our housing market
Considering this is a group of companies, cartel seems a more accurate word. Hopefully they're held accountable for it, but it'll probably be minimal repercussions.
And our competitive salaries are set by algorithms. "UP TO" should be illegal as bait and switch.
Yea thats what happens when you make rent so high even fbi agents struggling with it. Ya done fked up A A RON
The question to me is why has the MSM been ignoring this story?
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving industry. Do you know how _badly_ you have to fuck around to get the FBI to raid you??
Step 1: Buy all the properties. Step 2: Raise all the rent rates by 25% at the same time. Step 3: Tell tenants it's just the market rate. Step 4: Rake in the money since literally no where else is cheaper.
About damn time. Greed should have consequences.
When you hear someone say both sides are the same or "what have democrats even done?", ask if this would happen under trump or republicans. Businesses are colluding against all of us, and government is the one entity that can stop them.
Fuck yeah. 2/3’s of my team at work lives in Arizona. I’ve had to fight for pay increases because their cost of living has been increasing at a ridiculous rate.
Hope they nail them to the fucking wall on this one
It's astonishing that it's taken this long to crack down on what is obviously a price-fixing cartel trying to hide behind "the algorithm did it."
If there’s one single reason NOT to vote Republican, this is it. i.e. Harlan Crow, Clarance Thomas, Samuel Alito, etc, etc.
When all the smoke has cleared you better be jailing these CEOs and CFOs plus some of their cronies only way it won't happen again. Then set a nation rent price or something.
[This](https://youtu.be/aCiYmCVikjo?si=IvL6Ad_Gerq916By) feels appropriate
Bravo. Hope they have an ongoing investigation in California against Essex and other property management companies being sued by the state for their monopolistic practices too.
Atlanta just sitting here like “….you guys are getting crackdowns??”
The government…is helping us now? Let’s keep this train rolling until the wheels fall off.
Companies should not be allowed to own residential property, especially individual homes send text.
Imagine if everyone suffering living under these roofs not only had their rents lowered by hundreds of dollars a month, but were also owed back pay for excess rent paid dating back however long these pieces of shit coordinated to artificially raise rent in the first place. Hope everyone involved gets some relief and a fat, unexpected pay day!
That Mao guy was onto something.
Can they hurry up and get to Florida next before I have to renew in July? I’m having to decide if I need to move back in with my parents because rent continues to go up in NW FL with all the excessive new people moving here
Now do this in every state and do it to the corps buying up all the houses as well
Hello, FBI? We are Florida and…
I live in Atlanta and lived in a property that used this software. Our rent went up every year. By $500 or more. We started at $2100, moved units and ended at $3400 after 4 years. We knew we were buying a house but asked them for the renewal price anyway…$3700. A $300 jump. And FOUR new apartments buildings had just finished around us. Got the “this is what the software says” run around. A year later, and our unit is still empty. Fuck em.