Many listings for apartments are on on-site.com (which is "a RealPage company") and are publicly available...
So it could be argued it's not
"private prices" + "autoaccept" + "compliance"
But rather
"public prices" + "autoaccept" + "compliance"
Still problematic behavior (and probably add "private knowledge of inventory forecast" on top of that), but I'd argue price signaling of the available inventory isn't the main issue.
There is more than just pricing at question here. If you go to your typical local gas station with a 5000 gallon tank and fill up the station will raise their prices above the other stations in the area because they will only have a small amount of gas in their tanks and so they want everyone to go elsewhere until the next delivery fills the tanks up again. (depending on when you fill up the station may not even have 5000 gallons in their tanks.) How much tank is left at any station is NOT public information shared with other stations in the area.
RealPage though has information on how many apartments are empty and uses that in algorithms even though it isn't public information.
I added "private prices" as one of the factors because the official DOJ wording in the complaint mentions "nonpublic/confidential/sensitive" prices in 3 different places:
>The complaint alleges that RealPage contracts with competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage nonpublic, competitively sensitive information about their apartment rental rates
>“We allege that RealPage’s pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents.
>Landlords agree to share their competitively sensitive data with RealPage in return for pricing recommendations and decisions that are the result of combining and analyzing competitors’ sensitive data. *
I don’t think they’re talking about the price they’re renting the apartment for; I can’t imagine that number is secret in any meaningful sense of the word. Who rents an apartment without knowing the price?
I think they’re talking about more sensitive internal numbers. What are the costs and margins on the unit? How quickly are units moving at a certain price? What’s the turnover at particular prices?
I think the core mechanics bear some similarities to insider trading, with a third party “washing” the non-public information.
Another big one is when do the leases end for inventory control. RealPage is why Apartment dwellers report getting options to renew at cheapest price for odd number of months like 17. Realpage is trying to prevent a bunch of leases ending and flooding the market.
> I think they’re talking about more sensitive internal numbers. What are the costs and margins on the unit? How quickly are units moving at a certain price? What’s the turnover at particular prices?
Yeah that's my understanding of it too "competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage nonpublic, competitively sensitive information about their apartment rental rates and other lease terms".
I.e. realPage has an oracle view of all the lease ending times etc, so it knows for instance, this next July there's going to be very few availability, so boost all the rents by X%
I guess there's a "private price" if the apartment complex share what, after all negotiations, the renter ended up signing for. It can be more than what was on the public website, if they ended up signing for a shorter lease, or less if the apartment ended up needing to throw in "first month free" etc.
There's also private price of lease renewals done before the unit is put for rent on the website.
So it could be argued it's not
"private prices" + "autoaccept" + "compliance"
But rather
"public prices" + "autoaccept" + "compliance"
Still problematic behavior (and probably add "private knowledge of inventory forecast" on top of that), but I'd argue price signaling of the available inventory isn't the main issue.