Algorithmic Rent-Setting & Housing Equity
This brief examines how revenue management software, specifically RealPage's YieldStar, has enabled a form of algorithmic price coordination among corporate landlords that produces the effects of a cartel without any of the direct communication that antitrust law was built to detect.
The brief proposes a state-level fix: amending Rhode Island's Unfair Trade Practice and Consumer Protection Act to treat algorithmic pricing built on non-public competitor data as an unfair method of competition, sidestepping the federal evidentiary requirements that have left this practice largely unregulated. The analysis covers the legal framework, the economic effects on rental markets, and a detailed implementation path for state action.
How the coordination works
The same price-fixing, with the meeting moved inside the software
Classic cartel
Landlords agree directly: meetings, emails, a paper trail
Agreement is provable
Algorithmic coordination
Private lease data flows in; near-identical rent advice flows back
No meeting to prove
The brief’s fix for Rhode Island
- Ban, for landlords with more than 10 units, pricing software that uses non-public competitor data
- Within 5% of the software’s recommendation: coordination presumed
- Over 15% above the state benchmark: records can be subpoenaed
- Up to $10,000 per violation; each unit, each month, counts separately
The brief’s example: 15 units priced this way for 6 months is 90 separate violations.