- 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.
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.
It’s highly dependent on state and municipality but it actually is. I was shocked when I moved to San Diego and about half of all managed buildings we talked to had a single partner isp/cable provider. While it is technically in your rights to force them to let you install a dish because of federal laws, nothing requires them to let a different cable or internet provider run physical cable up their skyscraper so they all cut deals with just one for a kickback. We had to give up on a building we really liked because the only provider was still DSL
Okayyyyy, I’m sorry you believed what they told you,and maybe California has some crazy laws I’m not familiar with, but in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Alaska at least, renters can choose from whatever electric or internet providers are available in the area.
I’ve lived in three states and in two of them you’re wrong. Landlords do shit and get away with it. Sometimes it’s illegal but not always.
I’ve heard of just about any utility being included in rent and I’ve personally experienced a few of them being. Also it’s pretty easy if you own a large apartment building to have a say-so over who installs shit in your building. It’s all highly specific on the local context and how much of a greedy asshole the building owners are
It is. Looked at an apartment yesterday who only provides Comcast as an ISP option and includes it mandatorily with rent payments. But sure be confidently incorrect
This is pretty similar to how it is in the US at over 90% of the places I’ve ever rented. But since we’re the world leader in enshittification, this kind of scumbag bullshit has been on the rise over the last few years.
I am glad you got some justice in the situation. Fuck them for making it difficult
I just went through a very long story with a building that uses realpage and they’re absolutely scumbags. Fuck Bozzuto is the only way I can sum it up