this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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With Shared Software, Landlords Are Teaming Up to Raise Rents (jacobin.com)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

My MIL worked for RealPage for six months. My wife (before we met) ended up in the hospital, and it was pretty touch-and-go for a while. MIL obviously wanted to go spend time with her. Her manager told her to choose between her job or her daughter. Because if she took time off to go to the hospital, the manager would consider it a resignation. MIL told the manager to go fuck himself, and walked out.

And from everything I’ve seen, that was just par for the course for RealPage. It‘a an evil company, run by evil people, with an evil end goal.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

If there aren't laws for crimes against the economy, there should be.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

According to the legal system, someone caught selling an ounce of weed is infinitely more dangerous and harmful than this behavior. These people should have the death penalty.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I think we should simply take their money, no need to execute them, it would be way too nice to let them off the hook of life, take all their money, have them pay fines and live in poverty until they die from natural causes.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It was never about supply and demand.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

It really wasn't. As soon as dynamic pricing hit, I stopped believing in the bullshit lie of supply and demand.

Capitalism is a cancer on society.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

There are more recent news updates than this one, but this is what I could find quickly before I have to head out.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/12/justice-department-rental-market-collusion-lawsuit-00167838

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (1 children)

People that developed or came up with the idea for that software:

  • Likely worked in buildings with breakable windows.
  • Have addresses.
  • Have kneecaps.
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Y'know, I think kneecaps are no longer scary enough. I think it's time we moved on to elbows.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Half of the bones in the human body are in the hands and the feet.

Telling someone you’re going to break every bone in their body feels like an exaggeration. It’s not realistic, and takes more effort than it’s worth. But it’s actually fairly easy for a small group of 3 or 4 attackers to break half the bones in a person’s body, with just a sledgehammer that you can buy in any hardware store.

Just some food for thought…

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not suggesting these people deserve to be executed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Simply stating a fact.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Why are renters not teaming up? I am sorry but the membership in my local tenants union is frankly shameful. Unite, organise in solidarity is the only way. I know people have a limited time but that's the situation we are in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Because unions are evil. They eat babies and practice dark ~~satanic~~ communist rituals. My GOP certified preacher said so!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I honestly didn't even know that was a thing

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You know I've honestly never thought of a renter's union before and that's a pretty great idea.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 3 months ago (2 children)

over thirty-one thousand landlord clients managing over 19.7 million rental units

In case anyone is still wondering why housing is fucked, this is it right here. That's an average of over 600 rental units per landlord.

People renting out their old house for a small profit are not the issue. Like a lot of things, it really only breaks once corporations get involved.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Although, like economic figures, this tends to be concentrated. It would not surprise me if a hundred of those clients were managing 20k or more units apiece.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

Yep and it just compounds. The money they make they buy more houses driving prices up so they make more.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (2 children)

"Predatory Cabal"

"Price Fixing"

Landlords are literally rent-seeking, they provide no real economic value to society.

At best they are opportunistic parasites.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."

-Adam Smith

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Adam Smith, famous commie. If you took his quote without attribution people would think it is something Mao said while doing nothing wrong.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Adam Smith is massively misquoted by libertarians and conservatives. He railed against landlords, corporations, and monopolies. He's the reason we have the phrase, "rent seeking behavior".

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

And now they're part of a cartel, which is not only illegal in the US, but illegal in international law. (The oil crisis of the late 1970s was thanks to OPEC price fixing. We're still sore about it.)

[–] [email protected] 65 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I have a real problem with landlords. It feels like an especially predatory business. Some things just shouldn't be for profit. I mean, when you own something that people universally need, and charge as much as you possibly can for it, to maximize your own profit, for nothing other than just being the owner, it feels really scummy.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think there's a little room for nuance, but not much. The way corporate landlords are buying up houses and collaborating to fix prices is totally fucked and needs regulated. There also needs to be regulation or limits for private property owners who buy up a bunch of properties and slumlord it.

Where I think there's nuance is how things fall right now. I just left the military and I'm renting out my house exclusively to military occupants who are not trying to buy. I bought it at 3% interest and my mortgage is more or less fixed. The next buyer was looking for it as an addition to their rental portfolio. I did the math before deciding to rent and found that because my interest and mortgage are so low I can charge $800/month less in rent than a mortgage would be if I sold it. It's also less than their housing allowance so they have more for utilities and food.

It's regrettable that this is the situation, but in this specific case in a very high demand/low supply area, renting it out is the lesser of the evils. Hopefully the market crashes or rates fall and I can sell it to a family who needs it. But until then, I'll try to make things easier on some service members.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

It's admirable that you are trying to help some service men and women, and not merely looking to make the highest possible profit for yourself. I'm sure you're not the only landlord who isn't motivated primarily by greed, but many, if not most, are, because they are incentivized to be.

When the goal is maximum profits, it incentivizes business owners of all types to generate as much revenue as possible (and in the case of housing, that means increase rents as much as possible) and cut costs as much as possible. That's why many people are paying more and more for lower and lower quality housing.

The problem is the profit motive. And we can't just hope that all landlords will decide to be more like you, not when they have every incentive to be as greedy as possible.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

price collusion is free speech, just ask the petrol stations

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's not how that works. They aren't working together so when they look out the window and see the price they match or go lower. When the rental corporations are working together they agree on higher prices.

Gas stations actually make very little profit on the gas itself. It's the attached mini mart that brings in the cash.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They aren't working together so when they look out the window and see the price they match or go lower.

The stories my wife tells me about her gas station job say this is wrong. Her boss has binoculars readily available so they can see if the station across the street changes their prices, and they'd follow suit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes. But people are also extremely sensitive to the price of gas. So if he wants to draw more people he drops it. It's chained, but not a cartel.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They also did it with raising prices, and both did the same way. It may not have been official, but the behavior was the same either way.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

That's the thing though, because they don't have an agreement across the city, if he and his neighbor go too high someone will undercut them. He'll even under cut his neighbor if he thinks he can get enough more business. I'm not disputing that he'll follow them up too. A cartel differs by manipulating the market instead of responding to the market.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I know that something like this won't accomplish much, but like gun control, I'm a huge fan of making it terribly inconvenient to do the wrong thing.

It's a shame that even in a place like San Francisco, it's apparently impossible to enact rent control.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It’s a shame that even in a place like San Francisco, it’s apparently impossible to enact rent control.

It wasn't until very recently that SF became synonymous with progressive politics like it is today. For most of the 20th century, it was a highly conservative, "rich people," city. That kind of embedded wealth doesn't just go away within a few decades, SF is still pretty conservative at its core.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

I didn't know. Thanks for sharing.