- 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.
RealPage is one of the great unrecognized villains of the modern age.
Fun story, a few years back I caught my landlord overbilling me on utilities. I said hey I did the math and you owe me back $X and I’m not paying any more utilities until that amount I’d been overpaying has been used up. My landlord used Realpage for billing, and Realpage said no that’s not how it works, we’ll get it corrected but you need to keep paying what’s in the system or you’ll be delinquent. I said go fuck yourself, I have no reason to trust that you and the landlord will adjust it accurately if I give you more money, I’m not obligated to wait until your system figures it out, your system is your problem, not mine. I plan to pay amounts I actually owe and not amounts I don’t. They said you really have to. I said hey check it out I think I don’t, let’s see which one of us is right.
We went back and forth about it for quite some time, including me telling my bank not to accept withdrawals from RealPage (since they started charging me even with emails expressly explaining that they were not authorized to), which made them even more irritated at me and charging me extra fees. I said dude I am more than happy to explain this all to a judge if you want to go that route. They said you really have to pay though, we’ve worked out the overbill and corrected it but you still have late and returned-payment fees. I said we went over this, go fuck yourself, did I stutter.
When I moved out my landlord tried to not give me back my security deposit until RealPage was happy with my utilities balance. I waited 31 days and then sent them a formal notice that if they didn’t return my security deposit I was within my rights to take them to court and get paid triple and planned to do so in 7 days. They said it had all been a big misunderstanding and was there really a need for all this and gave me back my security deposit.
Just talking about it now again makes me amped-up and irritated.
I mean I’m glad it worked out right in the end. At the time I was just pissed, though.
Also, holy shit, I went back to look up some of the saga in my old emails, and there were definitely parts that were entertaining that I’d totally forgotten about. If you liked reading the summary check this out – this is a short excerpt from one of some very long email exchanges I had about the whole thing:
Hey, I just logged in to look at sending a check for this month and I still see a balance for last month. Did you decide not to cash my check? I’m not paying additional fees. I’m fine paying for my utilities. Charging me a late fee when I had a credit, that you didn’t decide to apply until after the bill was due, is ridiculous. Charging me a fee to store my credit card, when you’re refusing to un-store my credit card when I ask you to, is ridiculous. Again my bank’s take on it when I talked to them about it was that it “sounds illegal.” I’m sorta shocked that people put up with this + do business with you. Anyway let me know - just like last month, I’m fine sending you a check for what I actually owe you.
We have not received a check for your previous balance at this time. Once your check has been applied to the previous balance, you will receive an email notification. Until then, the full balance is still due on your account.
Okay, sure. I just sent via certified mail a check for $248.93. That represents:
- $299.96, the amount currently on my account according to you for the past 2 months.
- -$4 for the card storage fee from this bill (again, please stop storing my card; your system will not allow me to remove it)
- -$4 for the card storage fee from March’s invoice
- -$8.11 for late fee from March’s invoice
- -$5.08 for late fee from February’s invoice
- -$4.84 for late fee from January’s invoice
- -$25 for returned item fee from January’s invoice (I told you not to bill me, because I didn’t owe you money - I’m happy that you eventually applied my credit to this balance instead of trying to collect more without authorization, but me putting a stop on you trying to bill me without authorization for money I don’t owe you is 100% legitimate)
So in total $248.93. If there’s anything above you feel like is justified let me know … if (management agency) tries to take collection action against me for any of the nonsense above I plan to defend myself. I’m happy paying utilities and will not be paying random additional amounts of money. Hopefully that seems reasonable but whether or not it’s acceptable to you, it’s what I’ll be doing. IDK why you guys do business this way, but best of luck with it I guess. So the check, I sent to this address:
(photo)
Like this:
(photo)
The post office said they couldn’t find your address. The best they could find was this (and I swear this is what they showed me, I’m not being funny):
(photo - their address is on Ritchie Road, but the post office I swear to God corrected it to “Bitchie Road”)
So, that’s where I sent it, certified mail. They said expected delivery is May 25th. Again, best of luck.
There’s more, including me threatening to charge them a late fee for the time when they owed me money and weren’t willing to credit it back to me, but that’s as much as I had time to dig back up right now.
I 100% believe we should charge companies a fee for any mistakes they made that we had to spend time correcting.
I know banks do this in the UK if you complain and they’re in the wront.
All companies should do this. Watch how fast they’d fix their shit when there’s a fincial penny related to shit service.
They said it had all been a big misunderstanding
They always say this after they try to get away with bullshit.
Not a landlord, but I had a similar excuse thrown at me by a dealership. Towed my car an hour for a recall to a college town because everywhere else was booked for a while. They did close to $1000 of unauthorized work and then threw a fit when I told them I would not be paying for it unless they could show me a signed document where I agreed. When they realized I wasn’t a broke college kid after I threatened legal action and to report my car stolen if they were not willing to give it back, I got the “this was a misunderstanding, it never should have went this far” from the owner who had just called me a liar 10minutes prior. Such obvious BS
They always say this after they try to get away with bullshit.
They, in this case, could refer to banks, other corporations, your boss, politicians, police officers, etc. Anyone in a position of authority will inevitably be tempted to abuse that authority, or at the very least assume that their understanding of the situation is superior to the understanding of those over whom They wield that power. When conflict arises, if you’re correct regarding your rights, finances, etc., it’s “just a big misunderstanding, and can’t we all just get along?” But when They have the legal upper hand in a disagreement, They will fuck you with an iron bar and convince anyone watching that you are a deadbeat trying to pull one over on the rest of your fellow proletariats.
And meanwhile, guess who is constantly buying political influence to ensure they never lose the legal upper hand again?
The pandemic made me give up on working for other people, what I consider appropriate accommodation wasn’t in line and being told to put myself in danger as if it was a normal job requirement I signed up for made it real clear how valued workers are.
That being said. The first two things a person should buy once striking out on their own are a lawyer and an accountant. Those two peeps know how the world REALLY works. Youre not going to build stability from a shaky foundation, that’s just basic cause and effect y’know.
And having a lawyer on retainer is one of the best feelings in the world. It’s fuck you money, but you only need enough $ to pay your guy, not a warehouse of pandemic pine
Here in Brazil it’s much simpler because when you rent a place, basic services like electricity and water are transferred to you. So you get the bills, not your landlord.
And services like internet, you hire your own instead of using the ISP hired by your landlord.
USA landlords own the building so they get to say who your provider is and they will sometimes partner with a specific ISP and that is the only one you are allowed to use.
This…is not correct
EDIT: OK so clearly some landlord are dicks and are telling people whom they have to use. I can see it if it’s included in the rent, but if not, I do not see how they could force someone. I am also not a lawyer and cannot speak the the legality of said practices. I have lived in a lot of apartments in a lot of places. Internet and electric have never been included in the rent,and I have never been told which provider I was required to use.
That is incredible you were able to advocate for yourself that way.
It’s exhausting to have to fight like that for a fair shake. It makes me sad because I know how much energy and focus that takes.
Even if the victims can recoup some money, settlements almost never pay out commensurate with what was financially lost. What’s more is that company and the landlords who utilize it will never be able to repay the people whose effort, happiness, and opportunity they stole.
Yeah it was like my own little holy war. It went on for quite a while. Honestly it’s partly that I just like being a pain in the ass and being hostile to people, and this was a golden opportunity where it was warranted.
Think about if all the vitriol that goes into internet political arguments could instead be turned outwards at the people who run the fucked up system. It was a brief moment where that energy was channeled in a productive direction and towards the source of the problem.
Fuck yea man. I don’t understand how people can work for sleezebag companies. I know a lot of us have to work, I get it, but I worked phones (retention, the worst) for a credit card company for a bit and I was able to do it on the up, and be legitimately helpful for customers, all while I refused to upsell anything that they didn’t want.
I’d get “talked to” about it but I never cared. What’s a better experience for the customer? fuck your monthly metrics, the idea is to RETAIN customers, right? Well that starts by not fucking them off so you can make a bonus.
I never got a bonus, and I never cared. I’m of the mind that the product should sell itself, otherwise it’s not ready for market. If it’s not filling a need then it’s a waste of time and frankly, a companies resources. People generally don’t forgive corporations, nor should they. It still offends me that if sales weren’t what they were expecting it’s somehow the people at the bottoms fault, especially when the people writing the shit don’t have any need for the product. I won’t be moved from this rock. If my sales aren’t to your specs, take that back to legal and your ideas guys and tell them to try harder. Weak links can be found in more than one place.
Fwiw, I left the company, they didn’t let me go. To this day I refuse to carry debt or even own credit cards tho. Nope, doesn’t sit well with me. On the same vein tho, I measure how successful I am by how little I need and how little I spend, not how much I earn. This monopolization of everything has turned me staunchly anti-consumer (in the sense of consumption in general, not heil corporate/anti-customer. Right to repair 100%, revoke charters of those that bad faith skirt the intention). I both rue the reactionary in me, even if came from biological imperative, and fucking LOVE where Ive landed at the same time.
All you need to do in this world to win is kill your internal sense of justice but that’s a price too high. Team Rawls for life.
I don’t understand how people can work for sleezebag companies.
This is part one.
To this day I refuse to carry debt or even own credit cards tho.
I think this is part two.
It’s awesome that you do this, but if you can afford to avoid debt entirely you are probably somewhat priviledged compared to some. A lot of people in the US are working off student debts for degrees that didn’t quite deliver the jobs they were expecting. Or just were dealt a bad hand to begin with.
No man. In no way. I chop my firewood everyday. I have to rebuild everything I own. Everything. If it breaks, my life is learning whatever it is until it’s fixed. Case in point, my automatic transmission went out. I had to learn that and rebuild that. I am not a novice with a wrench, but that’s entirely because this is the life I’ve always had to live. I don’t not recommend it, I wouldn’t put my work load onto someone else and call that a rational thought.
July 5th we lost everything we own to fire. From our neighbors fireworks, we didn’t have any. Insurance told us to kick rocks. Starting over. Completely. Again.
No man. I’m not privileged. I got more help from my neighbors than my family, not to begrudge them, they’re all spread too thin too. I paid off my student loans in the mid aughties thankfully. I got the worst of the bunch, 3/4 of a degree, 4 years of debt and no degree. Thanks life. I took a vacation, once. I’ve been working full time since I was 15, almost 30 years now. I can’t afford dental care that I need and I don’t know what to do about that really, but I can tell, if it involves filling out 59 pages of bullshit that all says the same thing and spreading that nonsense around 5 agency, I’ll die from an abscess tooth first. The hoops required for help are indignant, and frankly, everyday the world makes a worse case for sticking around.
The only privilege I would say I have is I measure my success by what I don’t buy, which is the biggest middle finger I can give our society, as I teach others how to do the same. I’d go 128days on my dominant arm if that would put me at the negotiating table of an American General Strike. You couldn’t talk me out of it, in fact.
The only silver lining is that if I could not be me, then I would only want to be Diogenes.
All corporate landlords need to be dissolved. It shouldn’t exist. People should not be able to make profit off of housing ever.
Cannot say I agree with that last sentence but unlimited profits from housing should absolutely be illegal. I’ve been dealing with an absolute shit show of a corporate landlord, one that uses realpage, and it’s really been eye opening how fucked these companies are. I 100% knew they were scumbag pieces of shit but I got a full dose of the lengths they’ll go to in order to make a buck. Just two of the many cost saving measures: letting me go without heat for 3 weeks and letting our elevators stay broken for 6 weeks. I’m convinced the only reason they fixed our elevators is someone must have finally gotten their lawyer on the phone to them.
Absolutely souless garbage humans work for these companies. They sleep fine at night knowing you’re paying a lot of money for an apartment you’re freezing your ass off in, have to struggle to get in and out of, whatever. They absolutely give zero fucks about the lives they’re fucking with.
having to be responsible for the actual property seems to be a good idea.
idk how it’s handled in germany, but i’m not aware of stuff this bad. i have someone in my family who has renters, and they either go fix stuff themselves or pay a professional if the heating’s acting up again.
and being a renter of someonecs privately owned apartment in a corporate owned house, i feel like being taken care of adequately.
i hope it gets better for you guys.
Thanks for your response. I think that in the US one of our big issues is inconsistency. What I’ve described here is unprecedented for me until now but I’m sure many others have had much worse. The basic idea I think is that the bigger a company gets, the more they feel emboldened to get away with shit to save a buck here and there.
It’s insanely dehumanizing for someone to lie to your face and tell you their hands are tied and your broken heat will just have to stand for an unknown amount of time. My landlord before this was an amazing man who I will never forget. Many times he showed good will beyond what was required and you can bet your ass he would’ve had the heat fixed within a week at most even if he had to spend $10,000 to do it. In fact the heat did break once and he had someone there the next morning. Meanwhile the company with hundreds of millions in revenue refuses to spend a buck to expedite the process because they have the cheapest deal possible with some contractor who is slammed
The management in this building treats us like idiots who don’t matter. Despite repeated fuckups, everything is always “we’re doing the best we can”. If they were doing the best they could, none of these issues would’ve last longer than like a week and a half. The tenants here were damn near mutiny level it was so bad. People were posting notes with numbers to call and an exact count of how many days the elevators were out. It felt good to at least see people doing something to hold the assholes accountable.
There are times that a corporate entity of some description is extremely useful. The issue is for-profit companies.
A simpler solution is to add a tax, based on the property value for for-profit companies. For niche situations, the effect of this will be annoying but not devastating. For companies dedicated to sucking money out of housing, it will hurt them badly. Maybe have it tick up 0.5% of the property a year till it’s 5%. Slow enough not to cause a massive shock to the market, but large enough to force a change.
An obvious example of a useful company owned housing situation is a set of apartments. However, here a non profit would work even better.
As for valid for-profit ownership, it does happen. E.g. I know of a veterinary practice that owns several houses. They used them to provide subsided housing to staff, close at hand. They also allow them to house mid to long term locum staff close to the practice. Everyone wins from this arrangement.
I dunno if I want my employer to also be my landlord. It might have worked well for that specific case, but it’s easy to see how it could fall apart.
In denser areas, the only people willing to build skyscrapers full of housing are intending to be landlords. Even funding the construction of condos has become extremely rare because the cost to profit ratio doesn’t return enough to beat just buying ETFs in the market. If you can solve this problem for cities that desperately need to build housing faster and denser, then you can dissolve corporate landlords
A very easy solution is for the government to build public housing? Isn’t it rather obvious? It completely fix all things you talked about.
Buildings get built, rents are cheaper, and it doesn’t matter if the “returns” are lower than the stock market. The government doesn’t give a fuck about returns, they print the money.
Edit: and I also think it’s pretty fucking obvious why this easy simple and direct solution is not applied. Landowners and capitalists are in complete collusion. The classes are mixing in ways that they are indistinguishable now. And the government is completely controlled by capitalists. They will never cut their profits and means of control. They won’t allow it.
Public housing the US was historically federally funded and was for low income people. It was one of those liberal solutions that tries to solve something, but gets stuck in a system that is already racist, and then the whole thing is made worse by conservatives.
Social housing, where cities build housing themselves, can be a way out. Most cities don’t have a lot of experience doing this, so it’s going to have to start out with a few small projects. It can be mixed income instead of low income (which tended to support red lining).
Another possibility is for cities to use their leverage with developers to favor unionized shops. This may not be possible under existing state laws, however.
This right here.
I live in a very dense city, which means building residential towers is usually the only reasonable way to quickly increase housing density. And we desperately need housing.
Large buildings can cost billions to build. You need a government or corporation to organize around if you’re going to make that happen. And unless you’re China or the USSR in the 70’s, going the government route is going to be damn near impossible right now.
Best option is to regulate private industry.
Let corporations build them, don’t let them own them.
If they build a 100 unit apartment building, don’t let the corporation just rent them all out themselves.
Force them to be sold to individuals. That keeps the overall condo prices competitive, and then people who buy them can then rent them out on an individual basis for those who prefer not to / can’t purchase a condo outright.
Limit how many residential units a corporation can own and incrementally increase taxes for every unit above that limit.
Limit how many corporations one person can own. No more of this bullshit 20 numbered companies in one person’s name to get around shitty business practices.
Then where does the money go?
If someone rents you a house do they get to charge only the mortgage? What about repairs and other unforeseen expenses to keep it up? And if you pay for repairs that never happen, what then?
If people can only break even on renting, many just. They’ll sit in empty houses until market prices increases, exacerbating all of this.
What I’m saying is renting shouldn’t exist to begin with. People should not own more than one living place and that place should be the place that they live in.
Housing is a human right.
Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, created December 10th, 1948:
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Adequate housing is a human right.
Homelessness is a human rights violation.
America needs to understand this.
OK. What does someone do when they move somewhere new and can’t afford to purchase a house? Or don’t want to purchase a place because they expect to live somewhere 6-12mo for a contract?
Three thoughts.
-
Sometimes I need / want to rent. Example, I had to repair the foundation of my home and needed a single family home to rent for my family while my home was being repaired for 6mo.
-
Hotels / motels / inns are a pretty reasonable use case. People need temporary housing for travel.
-
I don’t want to live in an area for more than 5 or 10 years, I want to rent. Buying a house is a huge fucking pain, and is always full of expensive surprises once you move and have the maintenance on you.
I could go on, but IMHO, there are a LOT more reasons why renting is actually useful, and I might want someone else to be on the hook for the mortgage and maintenance.
People should not own more than one living place and that place should be the place that they live in.
This isn’t realistic. Maybe not owning additional homes for the sole purpose of renting to make a profit would be a better statement to make.
Haha I’m in this picture!
One was small claims court. They kept my security, tried to charge me a exit fee and demanded I pay more for cleanup. Then a late fee for refusing to pay! The idiots sent a manager over to small claims to defend it, who was literally out of her element. The judge kept going, “Where in the lease does it say that?” And this dummy manager didn’t know anything, forcing the court to give me my security deposit and drop the fees.
The other was threatening small claims court for an $2k because they ignored my email of my exit date, and tried to charge me a extra month. They immediately “found all my paperwork” all of a sudden and dropped it.
These fuckers are absolutely nickeling and diming people. And more people should be ready to flood the courts with their bullshit.
My uncle is a landlord.
He has NEVER had to pay a security deposit back. The judges in this small town always side with him.
Does it though? I can point to thousands of people that justice never came for.
I personally believe that when Christ returns, he’ll establish a fair equitable and just society here on earth, then resurrect everyone, inviting them to participate.
In that society justice will be served, but that’s not really hope for people suffering now.
I think his point is about judges being corrupt. He has information useful to us and he’s not mentioned how he feels about his uncle. No point being mean to him.
We need a national renters bill of rights! Rent control is badly needed because no one can afford to live anymore. If America becomes a nation of renters our economy will collapse.
Everyone should have ownership of their home. I do not know the mechanism for how to transition from rent to ownership, but its the only ethical, economical way.
The answer is probably a combination of things. We need to be able to build more houses / duplexes / apartment buildings / etc. That’s a fact. There could be ways to help people build their own house (up to code) and cut out the middleman.
If people could easily build their own, do you know how fast property values would drop? Homes in the middle of nowhere should cost nothing.
Homes in the middle of nowhere are already cheap. Making more housing isn’t a solution if billion dollar corporations can just buy all of them up for more than asking.
My answer, cap the number of single-family rental homes in a given jurisdiction. Give 5-year chits that authorize a property owner to rent the property, then every 5 years have some sort of event that allows someone else to take the chit. That way you don’t have 80% of the single-family homes being bought up for rentals and it doesn’t bar the market from having new people enter.
As for the event, my preference is for a landleech Thunderdome. Two blood suckers enter, one leaves, and they are allowed to profit off someone else’s hard work. Corporations are allowed to participate by champion proxy, but the champion must be a C-level executive and they must participate in every match for every property they rent.
Apartments and multi-family homes (duplex, triplex, etc.) can be rentals as far as I am concerned because there is room for it in society, but housing needs to be put in the constitution as a right (as does food) and rent has to be more regulated.
If America becomes a nation of renters our economy will collapse.
That seems like a weird assertion.
It is honestly not. Property ownership is currently the primary method for being able to collateralize small business loans. Without the general populace having access to that, that initial step for starting a new business or pursuing a venture before it is viable for investment becomes VERY difficult to achieve. Especially if it is something that requires a lot of involvement or time to get moving. Once you take out the ability to make a startup or small business, you are left with an ever-dwindling pool of options and end up in a persistent state of monopoly it oligopoly for most goods and services, which in turn leads to an utter stagnation of economic conveyance and growth.
Another way it stagnates economic growth is in the increased expense associated with housing. The actual economy, not the BS we are told is the economy, grows when money moves. Individuals and companies buying goods and services from each other. That only happens with disposable income. If everyone is paying 2x what they would in rent that they would in ownership, that comes out of their disposable income. This leads to less luxury (in an economic sense) purchasing and, in many cases, restricted necessity purchasing. So less money is available to move, which causes the economy to shrink.
becomes VERY difficult to achieve
Unless there’s another way, like they’ve achieved in European countries where renting is the norm. Their economies didn’t collapse.
Well, if this isn’t a classic case of “he said, she said.”
From the article:
“Rather than making independent decisions on what the market here in D.C. calls for in terms of filling vacant units, landlords are compelled, under the terms of their agreement with RealPage, to charge what RealPage tells them,” said [Attorney General of the District of Columbia Brian Schwalb].
Also:
RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions.
So, which one is it?
Regardless, these are some very interesting cases revolving around the Sherman Act as it applies to housing markets.
EDIT: Here’s the video version of the article.
Of course they are free to set their own price, but when the system tells them they should charge a higher price “due to market conditions” of course they take the easy way out instead of actually researching the market. So it’s both, but mostly the first because they are lazy.
