In two earlier posts I reblogged about a RealPage collusion scheme to jack up rent prices. After some time, Ars Technica now reports on a pending court settlement that requires RealPage to change how its software algorithm pushes up prices and favors the interests of landlords over renters.
if a court approves the deal, RealPage has agreed to update its software so that rival landlords cannot access “competitively sensitive information to determine rental prices in runtime operation.” Additionally, RealPage will “remove or redesign features that limited price decreases or aligned pricing between competing users of the software.” And the company will “cooperate in the United States’ lawsuit against property management companies that have used its software.”
Moving forward, the company will also stop training its models on “active lease data” and “cease conducting market surveys” that included a broad set of landlords who didn’t even use its software “to collect competitively sensitive information.”
Good thing for the US housing market, where the scarcity of houses coupled with the fundamental information inequality between landlords and renters that drives this structural exploitation is made a little less wide.