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.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
      13·
      5 months ago

      Fuckin’ don’t get me started.

      When I stopped the payment with my bank in January, their system refused to let me use ACH payments anymore, and said I had to put in a credit card number in order to even log in and see my balance and history. Okay, sure. I put in a credit card number for a cash card that didn’t have any money on it.

      Then, their system said that I couldn’t remove my credit card number from their system without putting in some other payment method (which had to be another credit card). But, in order to have a card number stored in their system (which I couldn’t remove), I had to pay a $4 per month credit card storage fee.

      This was when I started just mailing them checks and researching lawyers in Texas so I could take them to small claims court. I also sent the whole thing with documentation to the FTC explaining it as succinctly as I could.

      • acceptable_pumpkin@lemmy.world
        5·
        5 months ago

        What I read “ … Texas …”. Ouch, sorry to read that. I doubt that is legal in other states (or rather I’m sure it’s illegal in some other states).

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      5·
      5 months ago

      Every credit card number is engraved on a golden plate which is stored in a special nuclear war-proof bunker and guarded by men with automatic weapons and combat armor.

      You can’t expect all that for free.