U.S. landlords who use RealPage products to set prices on rental apartments are facing accusations of collusion.
  • A group of lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the United States
  • A complaint filed by Washington D.C.’s Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider
  • RealPage recommends prices for roughly 4.5 million housing units in the United States
  • RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions

A group of renters in the U.S. say their landlords are using software to deliver inflated rent hikes.

“We’ve been told as tenants by employees of Equity that the software takes empathy out of the equation. So they can charge whatever the software tells them to charge,” said Kevin Weller, a tenant at Portside Towers since 2021.

Tenants say the management started to increase prices substantially after giving renters concessions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • JCreazy@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    All corporate landlords need to be dissolved. It shouldn’t exist. People should not be able to make profit off of housing ever.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      01·
      5 months ago

      Cannot say I agree with that last sentence but unlimited profits from housing should absolutely be illegal. I’ve been dealing with an absolute shit show of a corporate landlord, one that uses realpage, and it’s really been eye opening how fucked these companies are. I 100% knew they were scumbag pieces of shit but I got a full dose of the lengths they’ll go to in order to make a buck. Just two of the many cost saving measures: letting me go without heat for 3 weeks and letting our elevators stay broken for 6 weeks. I’m convinced the only reason they fixed our elevators is someone must have finally gotten their lawyer on the phone to them.

      Absolutely souless garbage humans work for these companies. They sleep fine at night knowing you’re paying a lot of money for an apartment you’re freezing your ass off in, have to struggle to get in and out of, whatever. They absolutely give zero fucks about the lives they’re fucking with.

      • KptnAutismus@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        having to be responsible for the actual property seems to be a good idea.

        idk how it’s handled in germany, but i’m not aware of stuff this bad. i have someone in my family who has renters, and they either go fix stuff themselves or pay a professional if the heating’s acting up again.

        and being a renter of someonecs privately owned apartment in a corporate owned house, i feel like being taken care of adequately.

        i hope it gets better for you guys.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
          01·
          5 months ago

          Thanks for your response. I think that in the US one of our big issues is inconsistency. What I’ve described here is unprecedented for me until now but I’m sure many others have had much worse. The basic idea I think is that the bigger a company gets, the more they feel emboldened to get away with shit to save a buck here and there.

          It’s insanely dehumanizing for someone to lie to your face and tell you their hands are tied and your broken heat will just have to stand for an unknown amount of time. My landlord before this was an amazing man who I will never forget. Many times he showed good will beyond what was required and you can bet your ass he would’ve had the heat fixed within a week at most even if he had to spend $10,000 to do it. In fact the heat did break once and he had someone there the next morning. Meanwhile the company with hundreds of millions in revenue refuses to spend a buck to expedite the process because they have the cheapest deal possible with some contractor who is slammed

          The management in this building treats us like idiots who don’t matter. Despite repeated fuckups, everything is always “we’re doing the best we can”. If they were doing the best they could, none of these issues would’ve last longer than like a week and a half. The tenants here were damn near mutiny level it was so bad. People were posting notes with numbers to call and an exact count of how many days the elevators were out. It felt good to at least see people doing something to hold the assholes accountable.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
    0·
    5 months ago

    RealPage is one of the great unrecognized villains of the modern age.

    Fun story, a few years back I caught my landlord overbilling me on utilities. I said hey I did the math and you owe me back $X and I’m not paying any more utilities until that amount I’d been overpaying has been used up. My landlord used Realpage for billing, and Realpage said no that’s not how it works, we’ll get it corrected but you need to keep paying what’s in the system or you’ll be delinquent. I said go fuck yourself, I have no reason to trust that you and the landlord will adjust it accurately if I give you more money, I’m not obligated to wait until your system figures it out, your system is your problem, not mine. I plan to pay amounts I actually owe and not amounts I don’t. They said you really have to. I said hey check it out I think I don’t, let’s see which one of us is right.

    We went back and forth about it for quite some time, including me telling my bank not to accept withdrawals from RealPage (since they started charging me even with emails expressly explaining that they were not authorized to), which made them even more irritated at me and charging me extra fees. I said dude I am more than happy to explain this all to a judge if you want to go that route. They said you really have to pay though, we’ve worked out the overbill and corrected it but you still have late and returned-payment fees. I said we went over this, go fuck yourself, did I stutter.

    When I moved out my landlord tried to not give me back my security deposit until RealPage was happy with my utilities balance. I waited 31 days and then sent them a formal notice that if they didn’t return my security deposit I was within my rights to take them to court and get paid triple and planned to do so in 7 days. They said it had all been a big misunderstanding and was there really a need for all this and gave me back my security deposit.

    Just talking about it now again makes me amped-up and irritated.

    • bighi@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      Here in Brazil it’s much simpler because when you rent a place, basic services like electricity and water are transferred to you. So you get the bills, not your landlord.

      And services like internet, you hire your own instead of using the ISP hired by your landlord.

      • The Pantser@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        USA landlords own the building so they get to say who your provider is and they will sometimes partner with a specific ISP and that is the only one you are allowed to use.

        • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          5 months ago

          This…is not correct

          EDIT: OK so clearly some landlord are dicks and are telling people whom they have to use. I can see it if it’s included in the rent, but if not, I do not see how they could force someone. I am also not a lawyer and cannot speak the the legality of said practices. I have lived in a lot of apartments in a lot of places. Internet and electric have never been included in the rent,and I have never been told which provider I was required to use.

          • fishpen0@lemmy.world
            0·
            5 months ago

            It’s highly dependent on state and municipality but it actually is. I was shocked when I moved to San Diego and about half of all managed buildings we talked to had a single partner isp/cable provider. While it is technically in your rights to force them to let you install a dish because of federal laws, nothing requires them to let a different cable or internet provider run physical cable up their skyscraper so they all cut deals with just one for a kickback. We had to give up on a building we really liked because the only provider was still DSL

            • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
              0·
              5 months ago

              Okayyyyy, I’m sorry you believed what they told you,and maybe California has some crazy laws I’m not familiar with, but in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Alaska at least, renters can choose from whatever electric or internet providers are available in the area.

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
                01·
                5 months ago

                I’ve lived in three states and in two of them you’re wrong. Landlords do shit and get away with it. Sometimes it’s illegal but not always.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
            01·
            5 months ago

            It is. Looked at an apartment yesterday who only provides Comcast as an ISP option and includes it mandatorily with rent payments. But sure be confidently incorrect

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
            01·
            5 months ago

            I’ve heard of just about any utility being included in rent and I’ve personally experienced a few of them being. Also it’s pretty easy if you own a large apartment building to have a say-so over who installs shit in your building. It’s all highly specific on the local context and how much of a greedy asshole the building owners are

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        01·
        5 months ago

        This is pretty similar to how it is in the US at over 90% of the places I’ve ever rented. But since we’re the world leader in enshittification, this kind of scumbag bullshit has been on the rise over the last few years.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      01·
      5 months ago

      I am glad you got some justice in the situation. Fuck them for making it difficult

      I just went through a very long story with a building that uses realpage and they’re absolutely scumbags. Fuck Bozzuto is the only way I can sum it up

  • paddirn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    “the software takes empathy out of the equation”

    I can’t wait to see how even more callous the software can get when they add “A.I.” to it. Maybe they’ll just cut out the rental office people altogether and all customer service will be with a glorified chat bot.

  • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 months ago

    Haha I’m in this picture!

    One was small claims court. They kept my security, tried to charge me a exit fee and demanded I pay more for cleanup. Then a late fee for refusing to pay! The idiots sent a manager over to small claims to defend it, who was literally out of her element. The judge kept going, “Where in the lease does it say that?” And this dummy manager didn’t know anything, forcing the court to give me my security deposit and drop the fees.

    The other was threatening small claims court for an $2k because they ignored my email of my exit date, and tried to charge me a extra month. They immediately “found all my paperwork” all of a sudden and dropped it.

    These fuckers are absolutely nickeling and diming people. And more people should be ready to flood the courts with their bullshit.