RealPage rent-pricing case wraps with nearly $360M to renters
https://www.multifamilydive.com/news/realpage-rent-pricing-case-360m-renters/873553/Okay but Realpage has a decade of real pricing data that it can use to continue informing these rental companies and outside of them having extremely hard boundaries in their service this is just going to happen again.
This doesn’t do a whole lot to address the actual issue, and these companies aren’t going to stop colluding over a wrist slap like this.
However, that's not a systematic method for lower prices. It just prevents individual cases of price gouging.
There is enough turnover with new listings to find the market rate while preventing existing tenants from being screwed over by unreasonable prices.
Australia also almost entirely works off rentals owned by individuals who own 1-3 properties rather than corporate owners so no one landlord has any sway over the market.
I think this narrative is just meant to distract people from questioning the necessity of the landlord class, they want people angry at a faceless corporate boogieman instead of local landlords (for obvious reasons)
Not clear to me that is the right approach, or if owning rentals should be more of a fixed income approach (or even speculative - profits only come from the sale of the property).
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Land ownership is the biggest business and the source of the biggest conspiracies.
If you have examples of such a company in other industries, please share.
On that basis, the 'free market' should be called the 'free, competitive market' - without competition, it has little value. Businesses should be required to compete and to opeerate in competitive markets. Anything anti-competitive should be treated harshly.
I'm not sure I understand where you are going with this? Are you suggesting that a new product cannot enter a market without a number of simultaneous competitors?
If I want to roll out fibre to an area that doesn't have it, can I? If I want to build a fresh-produce store in a town that doesn't have one, then I need to find someone else to compete with?
Lots and lots of businesses operate as quasi-monopolies if you look hard enough. Especially in smaller and rural environments. Lots and lots of places have one gas station, one mechanic, one vet, one doctor, one diner and so on.
Your use of the word "require" seems difficult to implement. What if no-one wants to compete with me? If Apple stops making Macs, does MS have to stop making Windows?
(Seven has been experimentally determined, but I can't recall where.)
Housing needs to be decommodified. It needs to stop being a retirement plan. We need to stop letting people hoard it. We need to stop subsidizing exurbs and making it illegal to build the kind of walkable communities people actually like. Case in point: Red Vienna [1].
As another commenter noted, this is in every industry. Utilities are a particularly bad one including telcos. All the best ISPs in the US are municipally owned. Chattanooga was the first really big poster child for this.
Privatization of all these things is just rent-seeking behavior.
So many of society's problems come down to housing being too expensive. Anything that makes it expensive needs to be stamped out and that includes RealPage as well as Airbnb/VRBO.
No, it is not. Communism tried that and all communist countries failed spectacularly. Public ownership in practice means that everyone has rights but zero responsibilities.
Taking people's private property is not a solution to any crisis. This whole housing thing looks like "I want to have my cake and eat it too".
Hint: it has an international airport :)
Your comment is so outrage-focused that I’m not inclined to help you make your argument. I largely agree with your point, but dialing back the rhetorical pathos would make it more persuasive.
Can’t wait to get like $300 out of this. /s