AI-powered RealPage pools data to enable landlords to raise rental prices. While the company seems to push those increases aggressively, some cities are legislating solutions.
Corporate property managers are pooling data into an AI platform run by RealPage that helps them achieve the most revenue. During a nationwide housing shortage, this makes things even harder for renters. Some California communities are trying to ban this tool, and others like it, but one thing remains clear: the rent is too damn high.
The San Diego council president, Sean Elo-Rivera, explained it like this:
"In the simplest terms, what this platform is doing is providing what we think of as that dark, smoky room for big companies to get together and set prices," he said. "The technology is being used as a way of keeping an arm's length from one big company to the other. But that's an illusion."
In the company's own words, from company documents included in the lawsuit, RealPage "ensures that (landlords) are driving every possible opportunity to increase price even in the most downward trending or unexpected conditions." The company also said in the documents that it "helps curb (landlords') instincts to respond to down-market conditions by either dramatically lowering price or by holding price."
Providing rent guidance isn't the only service RealPage has offered landlords. In 2020, a Markup and New York Times investigation found that RealPage, alongside other companies, used faulty computer algorithms to do automated background checks on tenants. As a result, tenants were associated with criminal charges they never faced, and denied homes.
LAist
