re: DOJ/Garland Does Not Want Landlords Sharing Rental Information

Most conventional apartments use OneSite for their property management software. OneSite is also from Realpage and feeds directly into Yieldstar…which then uses unit by unit metrics that a leasing office wouldn’t be able to get by just picking up the phone and doing a “market survey” of their comps (i.e. how long specific units have sat vacant and complete rental history of each unit). It then compares this same info from all the other properties using Yieldstar.

Each day, the manager logs into Yieldstar and the dashboard gives a suggested price for all the vacant units. The manager can either accept the “suggestion” or ignore it (most accept it). Once accepted the price is automatically adjusted on the websites.

The system works when all the suggestions are accepted at the different apartment communities in the area using Yieldstar. The renter wouldn’t be able to shop a competitor hoping to find a similar unit at a cheaper price…it would essentially be the same or very near the same price.

So they want me to charge a more reasonable rent? How about they rein in the property taxes I have to pay on each property, how about the insurance on the properties, (one property has gone from $650 to $1800 per year).

Pull back on some of these cost and I can cut rent by about $300-400 per rental unit.

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Guess I'm missing a piece of this puzzle.

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You are.

You're missing the part where the complex owners no longer control their own pricing. They sigg that over to the company you are thinking only compiles/shares pricing data.

To be clear, the company compiling all the pricing data is doing so by also being the party that sets prices.

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It seems to be more about the collusion aspect. All the landlords in an area getting together to fix prices. That's been illegal for a hundred years.

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How would they even police that… we have the right to free association in this country.

So one St Bernard landlord can’t meet another landlord for lunch at Rocky’s? Or play golf together?

In the case of this program, wouldn’t it suggest a rate, and then the landlord has to sign off on it?

What's the real reason the corrupt, partisan DOJ is going after this company?

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In the case of this program, wouldn’t it suggest a rate, and then the landlord has to sign off on it?

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You're not understanding what's happening, or at least the actions that I'm familiar with that in my view are clearly illegal/anti-competitive.

Take the 25 apartment complexes closest to Arizona Sate University, and assume they're owned by 20 different groups. What's happening is these 20 different groups are assigning pricing policy to a third party, and that third party sets pricing for all 25 complexes. The owners have no choice here. They have zero control over their own pricing.

This is collusion/price fixing and clearly illegal.