- The Department of Justice accused software company RealPage of unlawfully scheming to undermine competition among landlords and create a monopoly that harms millions of renters.
- RealPage “allows landlords to manipulate, distort, and subvert market forces,” the Justice Department said in the federal civil antitrust lawsuit.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Everybody knows the rent is too damn high, and we allege this is one of the reasons why.”
“Allows landlords to manipulate…” What are we saying? They shuffle the responsibility of being an asshole onto the software? End of the day landlords were greedy bitch’s.
I mean, colluding with your competition to keep prices high is against the law. Yeah, they may still call their buddy across town and (illegally) coordinate what price to set the rent at, but the impact of that, vs a business that’s incentivized to keep all prices high to the benefit of them and landlords!? Not even close…
That’s quite literally it. It’s much easier to raise rents when the magic computer tells you to do it. Then no human in your organization actually has to take responsibility for the decision.
I don’t see the problem here. Yes, I’d rather see landlords themselves punished for price fixing, but that’s unlikely to happen because it involves prosecuting a huge number of defendants on charges that are hard to prove. Depriving them of software that’s tailor made to facilitate price fixing seems like a good first step. Who knows, a successful suit against the software company could end to making it a lot easier to sue the landlords who used it.