DOJ Backs Tenants in Case Alleging Price-Fixing by Big Landlords and a Real Estate Tech Company
DOJ Backs Tenants in Case Alleging Price-Fixing by Big Landlords and a Real Estate Tech Company
A ProPublica investigation last year about RealPage’s rent-setting software led to federal lawsuits asserting inflated apartment prices.
The DOJ action comes after a ProPublica investigation last year found that Texas-based software provider RealPage used algorithms to recommend rents to landlords across the country to maximize profits — a practice that experts said may violate antitrust laws.
In throwing its weight behind plaintiffs in the price-fixing case, the Justice Department waded into a fraught corner of federal antitrust law that could have a wide-reaching impact not only on the way businesses use technology to drive profits but also on the marketplace consumers confront.
In the past, collusion happened with “a formal handshake in a clandestine meeting,” they wrote.
“Algorithms are the new frontier,” federal prosecutors said in their filing. “And, given the amount of information an algorithm can access and digest, this new frontier poses an even greater anticompetitive threat than the last.”
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The scale of the damages from this company are of the sort where I'm convinced China would sentence at least a few dozen executives and major landlords to
But anyway it'll be great if this company pays XX million fines and shuffles the UI around while their entire business model continues to be automated price fixing
Have the guy who said there's "too much empathy" in landlording do nothing but change the name of his algorithm to the "Empathy Engine" and they'll be good to go.