In the old days, price fixing used to require economic competitors to secretly negotiate and often illegally collude with each each other. Nowadays, all it requires is that they use the same AI software tool. In this case YieldStar software for setting rents.

"One of the algorithm’s developers told ProPublica that leasing agents had “too much empathy” compared to computer generated pricing."

[...]

"“Find out how YieldStar can help you outperform the market 3% to 7%,” RealPage urges potential clients on its website.

Few tenants know that such software, owned by a privately held company, has had a hand in rent increases across the country"

#rent #RentControl #ai #PriceFixing

https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent