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If you’ve rented an apartment in the US in the past several years, you may have had the sense that the game was rigged: Prices creep up not only at your building but at others throughout the city, seemingly in lockstep. A new civil lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice today alleges that in many cases it’s not just in your head—and that a single company’s algorithm is to blame.

That company is RealPage, a Texas-based firm that provides commercial revenue management software for landlords. In other words, it helps set the prices of apartments. But it does so, the DOJ alleges in its lawsuit, by effectively helping its clients cheat; landlords feed rental rate and lease terms into the system, and the RealPage algorithm in turn spits out a suggested price that enables coordination and hinders competition.

“By feeding sensitive data into a sophisticated algorithm powered by artificial intelligence, RealPage has found a modern way to violate a century-old law through systematic coordination of rental housing prices,” deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco said in a statement.

RealPage’s reach is broad. It controls 80 percent of the market for software of its kind, which in turn is used to set prices of around 3 million units across the country, according to the DOJ. It already faces multiple lawsuits, including one from the state of Arizona and another in Washington, DC, where RealPage software is allegedly used to price more than 90 percent of units in large apartment buildings. RealPage’s algorithmic pricing first gained broader attention when a 2022 ProPublica investigation detailed how the company’s YieldStar software works.

The DOJ civil lawsuit, which was joined by the attorneys general of eight states, is a significant escalation in legal action against the company. It’s also a first for the DOJ, according to officials speaking on background during a call to discuss the complaint. While the government had previously filed criminal charges against an Amazon seller for algorithm-enabled price-fixing, this is the first civil action in which the algorithm itself, the Justice Department official says, was effectively the means of the violation.

The complaint itself quotes RealPage executives allegedly acknowledging anticompetitive aspects of its product. “There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down,” one RealPage executive allegedly wrote.

RealPage has repeatedly denied any allegations of antitrust violations, going so far as to publish a six-page digital pamphlet that claims to tell “the Real Story” about its products, along with an extensive FAQ page on a dedicated public policy website. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Attacks on the industry’s revenue management are based on demonstrably false information,” one section of that site reads. “RealPage revenue management software benefits both housing providers and residents.”

“We are disappointed that, after multiple years of education and cooperation on the antitrust matters concerning RealPage, the DOJ has chosen this moment to pursue a lawsuit that seeks to scapegoat pro-competitive technology that has been used responsibly for years,” said Jennifer Bowcock, senior vice president of communications and creative at RealPage, in an emailed statement. “RealPage’s revenue management software is purposely built to be legally compliant, and we have a long history of working constructively with the DOJ to show that."

The DOJ disagrees. “Algorithms don’t exist in a law-free zone,” said Monaco in a press conference to discuss the case. “Training a machine to break the law is still breaking the law.”

In this case, the complaint alleges that those algorithms consistently drove rental prices upward. “RealPage’s software tends to maximize price increases, minimize price decreases, and maximize landlords’ pricing power,” said the DOJ in a press release. RealPage also doesn’t just recommend prices; in many cases, it actively sets them.

“RealPage actively polices landlords’ compliance with those recommendations,” said US attorney general Merrick Garland in today’s press conference. “A large number of landlords effectively agree to outsource their pricing decisions to RealPage by using an ‘auto-accept’ setting that effectively permits RealPage to determine the price a renter will pay.”

The DOJ also claims RealPage has created a “self-reinforcing feedback loop” with its data intake and pricing recommendations structure that also gives it an alleged monopoly in the apartment revenue management software industry. Any competitor who plays by the rules, the DOJ claims, is at a distinct disadvantage.

The Justice Department has spent the past several years staffing up with technologists and data scientists, better enabling them to “interrogate the code,” as multiple officials described the investigative process. While this is the first major algorithmic collusion case, DOJ officials suggested it would be far from the last.

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Never, ever, ever quit your job to work for your spouse, and here’s why:

1) If you break up, it’s just about guaranteed you’ll lose your employment, but also

2) If the business does bad, both spouses now have decreases in income instead of just one

For the same reason, you should never invest all of your retirement into your own employer’s stock, because if the business goes down, you lose your job and also your investments.

You never want your household income to be so dependent on one business if you can help it.

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Source

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Federal agents raided a property management company operating in Arizona as part of an investigation into price-fixing rent, marking a distinct escalation in the renewed push to enforce consumer protection laws.

Cortland, an Atlanta-based property management company, joins nine other real estate conglomerates under investigation for creating a rental monopoly, resulting in rents across Arizona going up by more than 30% since 2022. The common thread between the 10 is RealPages, a co-defendant and consulting firm whose software they utilized to determine the maximum amount rent could be raised, then doing so in tandem in a manner Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has characterized as monopolistic.

“The conspiracy allegedly engaged in by RealPage and these landlords has harmed Arizonans and directly contributed to Arizona’s affordable housing crisis,” said Mayes. “This conspiracy stifled fair competition and essentially established a rental monopoly in our state’s two largest metro areas.”

The unannounced FBI raid of Cortland’s corporate offices, as first reported by MLex reporter Khushita Vasant, took place as part of a criminal investigation into RealPage and multiple landlords across the country. The probe started as a civil inquiry in 2022 and was escalated to criminal in March 2024, after a series of state-level investigations into Realpages was announced in Washington, DC, Arizona, and five other states.

The state-level investigation in Arizona does not currently include Cortland, and the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on whether they would be added to the current lawsuit or investigated separately.

The heightened scrutiny of anti-competitive business practices is part of the Biden administration’s larger initiative to lower the cost of living for middle-class families. In addition to taking on landlords in an attempt to lower the cost of housing, Biden has capped costs for medicine like insulin and expanded healthcare subsidies, and reduced excessive administrative fees in rental applications, bank overdraft penalties, and entertainment and travel purchases.

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I know trains are very sexy and fun, but realistically, if we want to reduce carbon emissions from cars, then we all need to get on board with massive expansions to public bus systems right now.

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By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

May 2, 2024

"At every turn, companies are cutting corners on the path to record profits, and American consumers are paying the price," one expert testified.

Progressive policy experts took aim at corporate greed and profiteering during a Thursday U.S. Senate hearing on "shrinkflation," the process of reducing the size or quantity of a product while selling it at the same price.

At the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing—entitled "Higher Prices: How Shrinkflation and Technology Can Impact Consumers' Finances"—Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) began by acknowledging that "prices today are far too high, and families are having a harder time finding a fair price, seeing more of their paycheck vanish into thin air."

"All of this is happening while corporate profits hit record highs," the senator continued. "Let's be clear: The fact that prices and corporate profits are going up at the same time is no coincidence. A study by the Kansas City Fed found that corporate profits drove half of the price increases in 2021."

Bilal Baydoun, director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, testified that "in America today, a fair price, let alone a sweet deal, is harder and harder to come by. In the age of corporate concentration and high-powered algorithms, pricing is in the midst of a troubling transformation, and the price tag as we know it may become a relic of the past."

"At every turn, companies are cutting corners on the path to record profits, and American consumers are paying the price," he continued. "In a practice known as 'shrinkflation,' companies discreetly reduce the size or volume of common household items—everything from jars of peanut butter to bars of soap—to charge consumers more for less."

"For some essential goods like household paper towels, shrinkflation accounted for roughly 10% of the price increase consumers experienced over the last four years," Baydoun added. "Indeed, big profits increasingly come in smaller packages."

Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone and other executive members of the group submitted a statement for the record asserting that "the American people are fed up with corporate greed and price gouging."

The statement continues:

Even as inflation has gone down, prices remain too high. Americans understand that corporate greed is a major driver of costs that make it difficult for their families to make ends meet. Corporate profits have exploded since 2020, and a recent study by our partners at the Groundwork Collaborative found that for much of 2023, corporate profits drove 53% of inflation. Comparatively, over the 40 years before the pandemic, profits drove just 11% of price growth. In the final three months of 2023, corporate profits reached an all-time high of $2.8 trillion, according to Commerce Department data.

"From Big Food to corporate landlords to Big Pharma, CEOs across industries keep raising prices despite bragging of bigger and bigger profits and stock rewards for wealthy investors," said Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US' Economic Security & Corporate Power program. "These executives clearly didn't need to raise prices so high, but they did it anyway because they could."

"Yet one by one," she added, "conservative Senate Banking Committee members today gave a free pass to their corporate megadonors and instead disingenuously blamed the Biden administration's actions against junk fees and price gouging that are actually working to lower costs for everyday families. They should get their priorities in check."

Earlier this year, Brown and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) introduced a bill "to crack down on companies shrinking their products and raising their prices."

The Shrinkflation Prevention Act would:

Direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to promulgate regulations to establish shrinkflation as an unfair or deceptive act or practice, prohibiting manufacturers from engaging in shrinkflation;

Authorize the FTC to pursue civil actions against corporations who engage in shrinkflation; and

Authorize state attorneys general to bring civil actions against corporations engaging in shrinkflation.

"We need members of Congress to grow spines and stand up to more of these corporate lobbyists," Brown said during Thursday's hearing. "We need our colleagues to join us in efforts like this, to lower prices and stop these tactics that distort the market, stifle competition, and make it harder for Americans to afford the cost of living."

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You ever think about how like, for most of modern civilization almost everyone was a renter of some kind, paying rent to some slumlord or aristocrat somewhere, stuck in a small home they didn’t own and would never own.

And then for like a few glorious decades, our governments started investing in people and started encouraging the building of houses and apartments that people could buy and own, and suddenly people started having real stability, and some form of personal wealth (even though for most of that time we still denied loans to anyone who wants white or male).

And then the whole world basically got rid of the pension, right as technology advanced and people are living longer and sometimes through otherwise catastrophic health events, so the worlds response was to essentially take all the single family housing that had ever been built and instead of those homes being treated as shelter, we started treating them as investments and retirement plans and assets? And now the only homes that can be built are homes with big profit margains that no one can really safely afford outside the upper middle class and beyond, meanwhile everyone else is trying to outbid their neighbors on something that was built 70 years ago?

And now housing prices has skyrocketed and most of us are back to paying rent to slumlords and aristocrats again except this time we’re not even in cities where our jobs and stores are nearby?

Yeah. I think about it a lot.

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Bruh.

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The study linked 38 million court eviction records to US Census Bureau data, allowing researchers for the first time to pierce the veil of court filings and see who else lives in homes threatened with evictions, other than the leaseholder. What they found, overwhelmingly, were children. Small children, and Black children, to be exact.

Across America, we now know, children under five years old are the group most likely to be threatened with eviction. The eviction rate for households with children is about twice as high as for households without children present. In all, nearly 3 million kids are on the receiving end of eviction filings every year.

“The magnitude of the effect shocked us,” one of the study’s authors and Evictions Lab Director, Carl Gershenson, told us. “I mean, 2.9 million children. That was, on average, one child per every eviction filing in the country.”

The study also uncovered troubling racial and ethnic disparities. Black Americans make up only about 18% of all renters, yet account for 51% of all eviction filings. Even at higher income levels, the eviction rate for Black renters with children is more than double that of White renters with children. A staggering one in four Black infants and toddlers living in rental housing are in renter households threatened with an eviction each year.

Black women renters with children in the home, like Ms. Schields, face a double burden. They are the demographic group with the highest rate of eviction filings every year: The eviction filing rate for Black women with children in the home is nearly 30%, the study found, compared to about 6% of White women renters with children. And having an eviction record can make it harder to secure housing in the future, compounding the disadvantage.

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This is why there are so many unhoused in America. Zillow sends me emails about houses that cost 500K. What the Actual Fuck.

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Not accurate.

Pulling your own credit for informational purposes only does not hurt your credit score, because you’re not applying for anything - it is applying for new credit, or trying to take on new credit risk, that causes your credit to drop.

Which is why asking for a credit score from a lender will hurt your score, because they’re pulling your credit to get you to take on new debt.

You can pull a free credit report annually from each major bureau at AnnualCreditReport.com, but the score is not free. However, you can call or purchase your score online from each of the 3 major bureaus. The free credit scores from credit card companies are not always free (if you paid $20 in interest last month, you essentially bought your “free” credit score), or they may not be a FICO score, so the scoring model may be different.

And then of course there are different scoring models based on what you’re applying for. A credit score at a car dealer will be different than a credit score from a credit card company, because the car dealers score is weighted to more heavily factor in information about past car payments. A credit score isn’t fixed, it’s a product of an algorithm, and the algorithm changes slightly based on who’s trying to buy the info.

TL;DR checking your score for informational purposes does not hurt the score, but your score is gonna be slightly different based on what you’re applying for anyway, so focus more on the actual info on the report and not the number.

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...

Two things are driving the divide between how homeowners and renters experience inflation.

First, while most homeowners’ monthly payments have not risen, the cost of renting has surged. Rent jumped 11% in 2022 from the year before. It also climbed higher in 2023, although at a significantly slower pace. Rent prices increased just 0.2% last year, according to Realtor.com.

As of November, the price of rent nationally was up 22% compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to Realtor.com.

Meanwhile, because most homeowners have a fixed-rate loan, their costs have not changed even as mortgage rates have soared during the Fed’s historic effort to rein in inflation. [...]

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Me seeing that “call 211 before you’re struggling” post: yes, true, always exhaust your resources if they’re available.

Also me seeing that “call 211 before you’re struggling” post: Almost none of the resources through 211 are properly funded, available to adults without children, or available to adults with short term emergencies that take 2-3 months to resolve. 211 is functionally useless for 99% of the financial emergencies a person will ever face. The safety nets offered through 211 are a joke and I understand why no one uses it, being told ‘no’ over and over again when you have nowhere else to turn is a horrible feeling.

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spiritually nourished by listening in to the admin meeting and hearing that work is having trouble recruiting staff for their understaffed, very part-time afterschool positions. the peace that passeth understanding, etc.