RealPage, maker of YieldStar, is almost singlehandedly the ones causing rent to skyrocket across much of the United States.
One of the algorithm’s developers told ProPublica that leasing agents had “too much empathy” compared to computer generated pricing.
You can learn more about them here and why this antitrust case is so important:
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
Exactly the point. The software did that for them. On purpose. And then they used it because they knew it would do that work for them. It might be a different kind of collusion but I’m not convinced that matters much, unless like you said, we can make new legislation to state more explicitly that this exact behavior is illegal collusion.
Yeah, I feel like people are too focused on whether or not it’s “legally” collusion.
At the end of the day, it’s a single entity with an overrepresneted ability to set prices.