RealPage, maker of YieldStar, is almost singlehandedly the ones causing rent to skyrocket across much of the United States.
One of the algorithm’s developers told ProPublica that leasing agents had “too much empathy” compared to computer generated pricing.
You can learn more about them here and why this antitrust case is so important:
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
Yeah, I don’t think this is strictly collusion either, any more than any other data aggregation tool.
But if we would just build housing it wouldn’t even be a fucking problem in the first place.