- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- 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.
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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.
Good for you though, that was a satisfying read.
I mean I’m glad it worked out right in the end. At the time I was just pissed, though.
Also, holy shit, I went back to look up some of the saga in my old emails, and there were definitely parts that were entertaining that I’d totally forgotten about. If you liked reading the summary check this out – this is a short excerpt from one of some very long email exchanges I had about the whole thing:
Hey, I just logged in to look at sending a check for this month and I still see a balance for last month. Did you decide not to cash my check? I’m not paying additional fees. I’m fine paying for my utilities. Charging me a late fee when I had a credit, that you didn’t decide to apply until after the bill was due, is ridiculous. Charging me a fee to store my credit card, when you’re refusing to un-store my credit card when I ask you to, is ridiculous. Again my bank’s take on it when I talked to them about it was that it “sounds illegal.” I’m sorta shocked that people put up with this + do business with you. Anyway let me know - just like last month, I’m fine sending you a check for what I actually owe you.
We have not received a check for your previous balance at this time. Once your check has been applied to the previous balance, you will receive an email notification. Until then, the full balance is still due on your account.
Okay, sure. I just sent via certified mail a check for $248.93. That represents:
- $299.96, the amount currently on my account according to you for the past 2 months.
- -$4 for the card storage fee from this bill (again, please stop storing my card; your system will not allow me to remove it)
- -$4 for the card storage fee from March’s invoice
- -$8.11 for late fee from March’s invoice
- -$5.08 for late fee from February’s invoice
- -$4.84 for late fee from January’s invoice
- -$25 for returned item fee from January’s invoice (I told you not to bill me, because I didn’t owe you money - I’m happy that you eventually applied my credit to this balance instead of trying to collect more without authorization, but me putting a stop on you trying to bill me without authorization for money I don’t owe you is 100% legitimate)
So in total $248.93. If there’s anything above you feel like is justified let me know … if (management agency) tries to take collection action against me for any of the nonsense above I plan to defend myself. I’m happy paying utilities and will not be paying random additional amounts of money. Hopefully that seems reasonable but whether or not it’s acceptable to you, it’s what I’ll be doing. IDK why you guys do business this way, but best of luck with it I guess. So the check, I sent to this address:
(photo)
Like this:
(photo)
The post office said they couldn’t find your address. The best they could find was this (and I swear this is what they showed me, I’m not being funny):
(photo - their address is on Ritchie Road, but the post office I swear to God corrected it to “Bitchie Road”)
So, that’s where I sent it, certified mail. They said expected delivery is May 25th. Again, best of luck.
There’s more, including me threatening to charge them a late fee for the time when they owed me money and weren’t willing to credit it back to me, but that’s as much as I had time to dig back up right now.
I 100% believe we should charge companies a fee for any mistakes they made that we had to spend time correcting.
I know banks do this in the UK if you complain and they’re in the wront.
All companies should do this. Watch how fast they’d fix their shit when there’s a fincial penny related to shit service.
“Corporations are people” in the U.S. when it comes to privileges, but never when it comes to penalties.
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Wtf is a “card storage fee”?
Fuckin’ don’t get me started.
When I stopped the payment with my bank in January, their system refused to let me use ACH payments anymore, and said I had to put in a credit card number in order to even log in and see my balance and history. Okay, sure. I put in a credit card number for a cash card that didn’t have any money on it.
Then, their system said that I couldn’t remove my credit card number from their system without putting in some other payment method (which had to be another credit card). But, in order to have a card number stored in their system (which I couldn’t remove), I had to pay a $4 per month credit card storage fee.
This was when I started just mailing them checks and researching lawyers in Texas so I could take them to small claims court. I also sent the whole thing with documentation to the FTC explaining it as succinctly as I could.
What I read “ … Texas …”. Ouch, sorry to read that. I doubt that is legal in other states (or rather I’m sure it’s illegal in some other states).
Every credit card number is engraved on a golden plate which is stored in a special nuclear war-proof bunker and guarded by men with automatic weapons and combat armor.
You can’t expect all that for free.
No it wasn’t. He shoulda taken them to court sued and gotten on record this company acts this way so we hav precedent for this situation. In this story. No one wins. Company didn’t keep their security deposit and the renters time was wasted completely. No one won lol
They said it had all been a big misunderstanding
They always say this after they try to get away with bullshit.
“We misunderstood that you would actually lawyer up. Our bad.”
Not a landlord, but I had a similar excuse thrown at me by a dealership. Towed my car an hour for a recall to a college town because everywhere else was booked for a while. They did close to $1000 of unauthorized work and then threw a fit when I told them I would not be paying for it unless they could show me a signed document where I agreed. When they realized I wasn’t a broke college kid after I threatened legal action and to report my car stolen if they were not willing to give it back, I got the “this was a misunderstanding, it never should have went this far” from the owner who had just called me a liar 10minutes prior. Such obvious BS
They always say this after they try to get away with bullshit.
They, in this case, could refer to banks, other corporations, your boss, politicians, police officers, etc. Anyone in a position of authority will inevitably be tempted to abuse that authority, or at the very least assume that their understanding of the situation is superior to the understanding of those over whom They wield that power. When conflict arises, if you’re correct regarding your rights, finances, etc., it’s “just a big misunderstanding, and can’t we all just get along?” But when They have the legal upper hand in a disagreement, They will fuck you with an iron bar and convince anyone watching that you are a deadbeat trying to pull one over on the rest of your fellow proletariats.
And meanwhile, guess who is constantly buying political influence to ensure they never lose the legal upper hand again?
The pandemic made me give up on working for other people, what I consider appropriate accommodation wasn’t in line and being told to put myself in danger as if it was a normal job requirement I signed up for made it real clear how valued workers are.
That being said. The first two things a person should buy once striking out on their own are a lawyer and an accountant. Those two peeps know how the world REALLY works. Youre not going to build stability from a shaky foundation, that’s just basic cause and effect y’know.
And having a lawyer on retainer is one of the best feelings in the world. It’s fuck you money, but you only need enough $ to pay your guy, not a warehouse of pandemic pine
Which trade?
I’m assuming it’s a trade, not many occupations put you in actual danger but are also ones you can strike out on your own. But I’ll admit my knowledge is limited.
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.
It isn’t consistent in the US. Some landlords or properties include utilities in the price of rent, some don’t. Some only include things like trash/water/sewer and it’s up to you to source an electric/gas/internet provider.
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 actually just looked into it and it was 100% legal for landlords to do this until a new FCC rule kicked in in 2022. Your lived experience is not the same as actual laws. You are technically correct but only since 2022. Given I moved to this city in 2020, we can both be correct. Isn’t that neat? It’s likely the other commenter in the thread also had this experience before 2022.
It’s crazy how there can be differing experiences in the same reality posted on the internet!
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.
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
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
That’s usually the US system, but occasionally not. Like a lot of things, there’s no consistency; it’s just kind of a big freedom free-for-all for better or for worse.
Yea it varies. I pay the electric and internet bills, the landlord pays the water/sewer/trash/tax bills. FL USA.
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
Dude, good job fighting the system on this! I wish more people were like you!
That is incredible you were able to advocate for yourself that way.
It’s exhausting to have to fight like that for a fair shake. It makes me sad because I know how much energy and focus that takes.
Even if the victims can recoup some money, settlements almost never pay out commensurate with what was financially lost. What’s more is that company and the landlords who utilize it will never be able to repay the people whose effort, happiness, and opportunity they stole.Yeah it was like my own little holy war. It went on for quite a while. Honestly it’s partly that I just like being a pain in the ass and being hostile to people, and this was a golden opportunity where it was warranted.
Think about if all the vitriol that goes into internet political arguments could instead be turned outwards at the people who run the fucked up system. It was a brief moment where that energy was channeled in a productive direction and towards the source of the problem.
Fuck yea man. I don’t understand how people can work for sleezebag companies. I know a lot of us have to work, I get it, but I worked phones (retention, the worst) for a credit card company for a bit and I was able to do it on the up, and be legitimately helpful for customers, all while I refused to upsell anything that they didn’t want.
I’d get “talked to” about it but I never cared. What’s a better experience for the customer? fuck your monthly metrics, the idea is to RETAIN customers, right? Well that starts by not fucking them off so you can make a bonus.
I never got a bonus, and I never cared. I’m of the mind that the product should sell itself, otherwise it’s not ready for market. If it’s not filling a need then it’s a waste of time and frankly, a companies resources. People generally don’t forgive corporations, nor should they. It still offends me that if sales weren’t what they were expecting it’s somehow the people at the bottoms fault, especially when the people writing the shit don’t have any need for the product. I won’t be moved from this rock. If my sales aren’t to your specs, take that back to legal and your ideas guys and tell them to try harder. Weak links can be found in more than one place.
Fwiw, I left the company, they didn’t let me go. To this day I refuse to carry debt or even own credit cards tho. Nope, doesn’t sit well with me. On the same vein tho, I measure how successful I am by how little I need and how little I spend, not how much I earn. This monopolization of everything has turned me staunchly anti-consumer (in the sense of consumption in general, not heil corporate/anti-customer. Right to repair 100%, revoke charters of those that bad faith skirt the intention). I both rue the reactionary in me, even if came from biological imperative, and fucking LOVE where Ive landed at the same time.
All you need to do in this world to win is kill your internal sense of justice but that’s a price too high. Team Rawls for life.
I don’t understand how people can work for sleezebag companies.
This is part one.
To this day I refuse to carry debt or even own credit cards tho.
I think this is part two.
It’s awesome that you do this, but if you can afford to avoid debt entirely you are probably somewhat priviledged compared to some. A lot of people in the US are working off student debts for degrees that didn’t quite deliver the jobs they were expecting. Or just were dealt a bad hand to begin with.
No man. In no way. I chop my firewood everyday. I have to rebuild everything I own. Everything. If it breaks, my life is learning whatever it is until it’s fixed. Case in point, my automatic transmission went out. I had to learn that and rebuild that. I am not a novice with a wrench, but that’s entirely because this is the life I’ve always had to live. I don’t not recommend it, I wouldn’t put my work load onto someone else and call that a rational thought.
July 5th we lost everything we own to fire. From our neighbors fireworks, we didn’t have any. Insurance told us to kick rocks. Starting over. Completely. Again.
No man. I’m not privileged. I got more help from my neighbors than my family, not to begrudge them, they’re all spread too thin too. I paid off my student loans in the mid aughties thankfully. I got the worst of the bunch, 3/4 of a degree, 4 years of debt and no degree. Thanks life. I took a vacation, once. I’ve been working full time since I was 15, almost 30 years now. I can’t afford dental care that I need and I don’t know what to do about that really, but I can tell, if it involves filling out 59 pages of bullshit that all says the same thing and spreading that nonsense around 5 agency, I’ll die from an abscess tooth first. The hoops required for help are indignant, and frankly, everyday the world makes a worse case for sticking around.
The only privilege I would say I have is I measure my success by what I don’t buy, which is the biggest middle finger I can give our society, as I teach others how to do the same. I’d go 128days on my dominant arm if that would put me at the negotiating table of an American General Strike. You couldn’t talk me out of it, in fact.
The only silver lining is that if I could not be me, then I would only want to be Diogenes.
Sorry to hear about your hardship. You deserve a better system. Best of luck rebuilding and I hope things get better.
Thank you, that’s quite kind of you and I’m not used to that from people.
All corporate landlords need to be dissolved. It shouldn’t exist. People should not be able to make profit off of housing ever.
Cannot say I agree with that last sentence but unlimited profits from housing should absolutely be illegal. I’ve been dealing with an absolute shit show of a corporate landlord, one that uses realpage, and it’s really been eye opening how fucked these companies are. I 100% knew they were scumbag pieces of shit but I got a full dose of the lengths they’ll go to in order to make a buck. Just two of the many cost saving measures: letting me go without heat for 3 weeks and letting our elevators stay broken for 6 weeks. I’m convinced the only reason they fixed our elevators is someone must have finally gotten their lawyer on the phone to them.
Absolutely souless garbage humans work for these companies. They sleep fine at night knowing you’re paying a lot of money for an apartment you’re freezing your ass off in, have to struggle to get in and out of, whatever. They absolutely give zero fucks about the lives they’re fucking with.
having to be responsible for the actual property seems to be a good idea.
idk how it’s handled in germany, but i’m not aware of stuff this bad. i have someone in my family who has renters, and they either go fix stuff themselves or pay a professional if the heating’s acting up again.
and being a renter of someonecs privately owned apartment in a corporate owned house, i feel like being taken care of adequately.
i hope it gets better for you guys.
Thanks for your response. I think that in the US one of our big issues is inconsistency. What I’ve described here is unprecedented for me until now but I’m sure many others have had much worse. The basic idea I think is that the bigger a company gets, the more they feel emboldened to get away with shit to save a buck here and there.
It’s insanely dehumanizing for someone to lie to your face and tell you their hands are tied and your broken heat will just have to stand for an unknown amount of time. My landlord before this was an amazing man who I will never forget. Many times he showed good will beyond what was required and you can bet your ass he would’ve had the heat fixed within a week at most even if he had to spend $10,000 to do it. In fact the heat did break once and he had someone there the next morning. Meanwhile the company with hundreds of millions in revenue refuses to spend a buck to expedite the process because they have the cheapest deal possible with some contractor who is slammed
The management in this building treats us like idiots who don’t matter. Despite repeated fuckups, everything is always “we’re doing the best we can”. If they were doing the best they could, none of these issues would’ve last longer than like a week and a half. The tenants here were damn near mutiny level it was so bad. People were posting notes with numbers to call and an exact count of how many days the elevators were out. It felt good to at least see people doing something to hold the assholes accountable.
There are times that a corporate entity of some description is extremely useful. The issue is for-profit companies.
A simpler solution is to add a tax, based on the property value for for-profit companies. For niche situations, the effect of this will be annoying but not devastating. For companies dedicated to sucking money out of housing, it will hurt them badly. Maybe have it tick up 0.5% of the property a year till it’s 5%. Slow enough not to cause a massive shock to the market, but large enough to force a change.
An obvious example of a useful company owned housing situation is a set of apartments. However, here a non profit would work even better.
As for valid for-profit ownership, it does happen. E.g. I know of a veterinary practice that owns several houses. They used them to provide subsided housing to staff, close at hand. They also allow them to house mid to long term locum staff close to the practice. Everyone wins from this arrangement.
I dunno if I want my employer to also be my landlord. It might have worked well for that specific case, but it’s easy to see how it could fall apart.
If you’re on a 3 month or so contract, it makes sense. It’s too long to deal with hotels, but too short for proper rentals.
Basically, there are some legit cases for property ownership. The trick is to kill the leaches, without causing too much damage elsewhere.
In denser areas, the only people willing to build skyscrapers full of housing are intending to be landlords. Even funding the construction of condos has become extremely rare because the cost to profit ratio doesn’t return enough to beat just buying ETFs in the market. If you can solve this problem for cities that desperately need to build housing faster and denser, then you can dissolve corporate landlords
A very easy solution is for the government to build public housing? Isn’t it rather obvious? It completely fix all things you talked about.
Buildings get built, rents are cheaper, and it doesn’t matter if the “returns” are lower than the stock market. The government doesn’t give a fuck about returns, they print the money.
Edit: and I also think it’s pretty fucking obvious why this easy simple and direct solution is not applied. Landowners and capitalists are in complete collusion. The classes are mixing in ways that they are indistinguishable now. And the government is completely controlled by capitalists. They will never cut their profits and means of control. They won’t allow it.
Public housing the US was historically federally funded and was for low income people. It was one of those liberal solutions that tries to solve something, but gets stuck in a system that is already racist, and then the whole thing is made worse by conservatives.
Social housing, where cities build housing themselves, can be a way out. Most cities don’t have a lot of experience doing this, so it’s going to have to start out with a few small projects. It can be mixed income instead of low income (which tended to support red lining).
Another possibility is for cities to use their leverage with developers to favor unionized shops. This may not be possible under existing state laws, however.
Definitely should be mixed income, and the planning for it is better handled more locally (neighbourhood/borough, city, town etc.). But it should be funded federally, cause cities can’t print money. All development they make has to be funded by taxes. The federal government doesn’t have to earn a dime, they can just print a couple hundred billion and distribute it to all the major population centers to develop public housing and infrastructure however they see best. That would work best imo
This right here.
I live in a very dense city, which means building residential towers is usually the only reasonable way to quickly increase housing density. And we desperately need housing.
Large buildings can cost billions to build. You need a government or corporation to organize around if you’re going to make that happen. And unless you’re China or the USSR in the 70’s, going the government route is going to be damn near impossible right now.
Best option is to regulate private industry.
Let corporations build them, don’t let them own them.
If they build a 100 unit apartment building, don’t let the corporation just rent them all out themselves.
Force them to be sold to individuals. That keeps the overall condo prices competitive, and then people who buy them can then rent them out on an individual basis for those who prefer not to / can’t purchase a condo outright.
Limit how many residential units a corporation can own and incrementally increase taxes for every unit above that limit.
Limit how many corporations one person can own. No more of this bullshit 20 numbered companies in one person’s name to get around shitty business practices.
As I stated at the top of the thread, nobody builds condos in cities anymore because they don’t make enough money to beat the market. If I’m rich enough to build a skyscraper it better have better returns than buying an s&p etf. This is the key issue for cities. If you block corporate landlordship, they won’t build condos instead. They will build nothing at all and invest in other stuff.
Then where does the money go?
If someone rents you a house do they get to charge only the mortgage? What about repairs and other unforeseen expenses to keep it up? And if you pay for repairs that never happen, what then?
If people can only break even on renting, many just. They’ll sit in empty houses until market prices increases, exacerbating all of this.
What I’m saying is renting shouldn’t exist to begin with. People should not own more than one living place and that place should be the place that they live in.
Housing is a human right.
Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, created December 10th, 1948:
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Adequate housing is a human right.
Homelessness is a human rights violation.
America needs to understand this.
Humanity collectively decided this shit 76 years ago and America still can’t get with the program. Smh.
Sigh …this feeling of disappointment in my country is unceremoniously familiar.
OK. What does someone do when they move somewhere new and can’t afford to purchase a house? Or don’t want to purchase a place because they expect to live somewhere 6-12mo for a contract?
The solutions I’ve seen require a fundamental rethinking of the way housing works in the USA (and most places), where renting just turns into another way to build some amount of equity, and the property managers are under more democratic control. More of the process subsidized by the local government, in the same way that water treatment is.
Arguably it’s renting by another name, but the central point is to strip the profit motive out of it (some salaries are needed, but in a system with more regulatory oversight) and to allow the renter to get some financial benefit so they aren’t simply pissing money away.
Apologies in advance for that vague response: I’m not an economist or real estate expert, so I can’t back up that general idea with any kind of details or evidence it’s feasible.
Yeah, I agree totally. That’s a great idea. Lease-to-own or something similar. As a renter I’d love to build some form of equity. Because in the US the only real way to build equity or generational wealth is through owning property. Which makes real estate a VERY hot commodity to speculate in. Which is a huge problem for people who just want somewhere to live and built modest equity like everyone else has.
Public housing, rented at cost directly from the government. And you can stay in the house as long as you want, so it eliminates the “risk” of renting. Done. Solved it.
Now just fucking build some public housing please.
I think this is a good idea for public housing. BUT that is not what the vast majority of americans want to live in. Uniform apartments, townhomes or small single-family homes are not the norm and I’d hesitate to make the majority of future developments so homogenous.
And then you have the issue with government-provided housing as we’ve had in the past: underfunding, under policing, bad locations, NIMBY assholes, etc. We already have subsidized housing/rental assistance: Section 8. So this would be a constant battle to just keep it decent.
Public housing doesn’t need to be uniform or boring… that was mostly a result of the ideology of urban planners of the mid 20th century when most public housing projects happened. The government can contract a private developer to make a nice building, that is well located, and is not just for poor people. That seems so obvious, but it seems people are stuck by their own ideology and can’t even think a bit outside of what is, or has been.
And I’m not talking about subsidised, I mean PUBLIC. Owned by the government or by coops, councils etc. Built using federal money. Just having this around would decrease overall housing costs so much… the market would have to compete with the no-profit, cost only, rents of public housing.
And Amazon has done a lot of research and found you only need to control 8% of a market to control the pricing. The government just has to build enough public housing in major population centers facing rent crisis to own 8% of total housing there. And that’s it. Rent cost crisis averted. And thousands of jobs and GDP generated because of all the construction (add in extra infrastructure for better access to the public housing, and you got a real economic boom cooking — hint hint, it’s literally what China did lmao).
Three thoughts.
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Sometimes I need / want to rent. Example, I had to repair the foundation of my home and needed a single family home to rent for my family while my home was being repaired for 6mo.
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Hotels / motels / inns are a pretty reasonable use case. People need temporary housing for travel.
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I don’t want to live in an area for more than 5 or 10 years, I want to rent. Buying a house is a huge fucking pain, and is always full of expensive surprises once you move and have the maintenance on you.
I could go on, but IMHO, there are a LOT more reasons why renting is actually useful, and I might want someone else to be on the hook for the mortgage and maintenance.
There will always be scenarios where renting is necessary but what I was getting at was it’s out of control.
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What about those who don’t want to own?
Co-ops, or other not for profit rental models. Doesn’t have to be a for profit corporation just to manage the building.
“Gosh, I would love to pay the same amount or more to build no equity and have some shit bag landlord paint the walls white and claim he made repairs” said practically no one. Even if they did, there isn’t a reason to maintain an insane system for the benefit of very few.
Nah—I’d just assume let everyone choose for themselves whether renting or owning is right for them.
That’s working out so well for us.
I’ve known so many people that think buying would tie them down too much.
You’re more than welcome to buy me a house.
No thanks. I already own one. I don’t need to buy another one. I’m not greedy after all.
You let me know how id have a roof over my head without the ability to buy a house. I’m sure it’ll be brilliant advice.
If you can afford rent, why wouldn’t you be able to afford a mortgage payment?
See? Brilliant. Completely ignoring the process of buying the property.
People should not own more than one living place and that place should be the place that they live in.
This isn’t realistic. Maybe not owning additional homes for the sole purpose of renting to make a profit would be a better statement to make.
No renting = I hope you like camping in the woods, because that’s going to be your only option when you travel for vacation.
Hotels/motels still exist.
I’m not going to get into the discussion about whether renting should or should not exist but I can get behind the idea that renting for profit shouldn’t be a thing.
Haha I’m in this picture!
One was small claims court. They kept my security, tried to charge me a exit fee and demanded I pay more for cleanup. Then a late fee for refusing to pay! The idiots sent a manager over to small claims to defend it, who was literally out of her element. The judge kept going, “Where in the lease does it say that?” And this dummy manager didn’t know anything, forcing the court to give me my security deposit and drop the fees.
The other was threatening small claims court for an $2k because they ignored my email of my exit date, and tried to charge me a extra month. They immediately “found all my paperwork” all of a sudden and dropped it.
These fuckers are absolutely nickeling and diming people. And more people should be ready to flood the courts with their bullshit.
My uncle is a landlord.
He has NEVER had to pay a security deposit back. The judges in this small town always side with him.
Your uncle is a scum lord
Sounds like a cunt 👍
Justice comes for everyone eventually 😘
Does it though? I can point to thousands of people that justice never came for.
I personally believe that when Christ returns, he’ll establish a fair equitable and just society here on earth, then resurrect everyone, inviting them to participate.
In that society justice will be served, but that’s not really hope for people suffering now.
Yeah we have to build the torment nexus.
Bro, hell isnt in the bible, death is just death, a ton of verses describe it as ‘sleep’.
Death very obviously isn’t justice. It’s just sleep.
… the torment nexus isn’t justice either but it’s fun to think about.
It certainly does.
You might have misread that 🤭
You might have misread what I was saying. 🥴🤒😵💫😮💨
Is it your fault one of your relatives is a jackass?
I’d be ashamed to even tell anyone I was related to a l*ndlord
Good for you. Your shame would be misplaced. What my uncle does has nothing to do with me.
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You literally just declared “my uncle is a landlord” with no additional information. What did you expect?
You’re right. I should have expected mouth breathing communist crusaders to think I was bragging… on Lemmy of all places.
Congrats? The fuck you want a cookie?
I think his point is about judges being corrupt. He has information useful to us and he’s not mentioned how he feels about his uncle. No point being mean to him.
He kind of just said it with no comment so I assumed he was bragging about it. But you’re right I’ll head over to say sorry.
Sure, moron.
I’ll take a cookie.
Like it’s my fault or something.
Sorry man, I was in a bad mood and took it out on you.
We need a national renters bill of rights! Rent control is badly needed because no one can afford to live anymore. If America becomes a nation of renters our economy will collapse.
Everyone should have ownership of their home. I do not know the mechanism for how to transition from rent to ownership, but its the only ethical, economical way.
The answer is probably a combination of things. We need to be able to build more houses / duplexes / apartment buildings / etc. That’s a fact. There could be ways to help people build their own house (up to code) and cut out the middleman.
If people could easily build their own, do you know how fast property values would drop? Homes in the middle of nowhere should cost nothing.
Homes in the middle of nowhere are already cheap. Making more housing isn’t a solution if billion dollar corporations can just buy all of them up for more than asking.
We need housing where people work. Living in the middle of nowhere isn’t helpful for 75% of the country.
Corporations buy housing because they beleive its a good investment.
Right now, they’re right. But a lot of that is because it’s legally hard to build enough new housing to keep up with demand in many cities because most of their area is zoned exclusively for mcmansions.
Housing in the middle of nowhere being cheap if you can’t get a good job in the middle of nowhere.
You think if people build their own houses, then mysterious billion dollar corporations will buy them up? That’s… weird. I don’t know how that would be bad. You could just build another one.
Charge 50% tax on rental properties.
Put the money into a fund that builds more properties in that area.
You can argue that the tax will be passed on to renters, but they’re already charging all the market can bear because there’s a shortage of property.
My answer, cap the number of single-family rental homes in a given jurisdiction. Give 5-year chits that authorize a property owner to rent the property, then every 5 years have some sort of event that allows someone else to take the chit. That way you don’t have 80% of the single-family homes being bought up for rentals and it doesn’t bar the market from having new people enter.
As for the event, my preference is for a landleech Thunderdome. Two blood suckers enter, one leaves, and they are allowed to profit off someone else’s hard work. Corporations are allowed to participate by champion proxy, but the champion must be a C-level executive and they must participate in every match for every property they rent.
Apartments and multi-family homes (duplex, triplex, etc.) can be rentals as far as I am concerned because there is room for it in society, but housing needs to be put in the constitution as a right (as does food) and rent has to be more regulated.
Or we could just ban single family house renting. Hell, the a few cities where they should be banning any new single family housing at all.
If America becomes a nation of renters our economy will collapse.
That seems like a weird assertion.
It is honestly not. Property ownership is currently the primary method for being able to collateralize small business loans. Without the general populace having access to that, that initial step for starting a new business or pursuing a venture before it is viable for investment becomes VERY difficult to achieve. Especially if it is something that requires a lot of involvement or time to get moving. Once you take out the ability to make a startup or small business, you are left with an ever-dwindling pool of options and end up in a persistent state of monopoly it oligopoly for most goods and services, which in turn leads to an utter stagnation of economic conveyance and growth.
Another way it stagnates economic growth is in the increased expense associated with housing. The actual economy, not the BS we are told is the economy, grows when money moves. Individuals and companies buying goods and services from each other. That only happens with disposable income. If everyone is paying 2x what they would in rent that they would in ownership, that comes out of their disposable income. This leads to less luxury (in an economic sense) purchasing and, in many cases, restricted necessity purchasing. So less money is available to move, which causes the economy to shrink.
becomes VERY difficult to achieve
Unless there’s another way, like they’ve achieved in European countries where renting is the norm. Their economies didn’t collapse.
Afaik those countries also have rather extensive tenant rights laws, rent control/caps, and a robust entrepreneur support system, like universal health care and generous PTO laws so people can take time to pursue things while minimizing the risks.
Yes, and none of them have had their economies collapse.
Very true, but let’s see that happen in the US, Australia, or New Zealand. Or any of the other dystopian nightmares that capitalists have manipulated into their own private wonderlands.
I think you’re overestimating how different those countries are.
Well, if this isn’t a classic case of “he said, she said.”
From the article:
“Rather than making independent decisions on what the market here in D.C. calls for in terms of filling vacant units, landlords are compelled, under the terms of their agreement with RealPage, to charge what RealPage tells them,” said [Attorney General of the District of Columbia Brian Schwalb].
Also:
RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions.
So, which one is it?
Regardless, these are some very interesting cases revolving around the Sherman Act as it applies to housing markets.
EDIT: Here’s the video version of the article.
Of course they are free to set their own price, but when the system tells them they should charge a higher price “due to market conditions” of course they take the easy way out instead of actually researching the market. So it’s both, but mostly the first because they are lazy.
Just looked at that company’s website. Gotta love the frigid mentality that causes them to refer to people’s home and shelter as a “business” and talk about “minimizing costs” like it is making fucking dog collars.
If anyone knows how to get in touch with Anonymous, please suggest that they obliterate this dystopian nightmare from the face of the internet.
Why isnt ratethelandlord.org more popular?
Because when the deck is stacked against you with even finding a place to rent - let alone one of decent quality at an affordable price - reviews might not be that helpful?
If you’re starving, a stale hunk of bread is better than none.
Can we engage on this? I feel for the people who are truly on the edge. I would also suggest that organizing those who are still housed to share information for mutual advantage is a cool idea.
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I’m not reading any disagreement with this POV from above - reviews are useful.
However, it’s also common for those looking for housing to be in a place of urgency.
In Los Angeles, it’s very uncommon to have a landlord that will let you see an apartment any more than two weeks ahead of time, unless it’s brand new and still under construction. ( brand new apartments in LA can be extremely overpriced - downtown is filled with studio apartments that will charge you $4000+ USD for roughly 30m2 of space )
Most people in Los Angeles will start looking about a month ahead of time, feel out what they’re looking for vs what they can afford, and then go on a 1-2 week long scramble at the end to find anything as their emotional and logistical clock ticks down to homelessness. The security of having a roof, especially in that stressful state, becomes far more important perceptually than previous tenants’ opinions of the landlord at that time, especially knowing that their landlord of building office may be completely different, given the inherent one-sidedness of a review and the rate at which property management changes hands.
In writing, this likely sounds hyperbolic. But this story is common, especially in the emotional space of the moment, and the inherent housing pressure upon the vast majority of prospective tenants is ( in my opinion ) so strong and so stark that the experience is really nothing like those in the market for consumable / luxury goods where the buyer has ample agency and time for making an informed decision.
A new TV is not something a person needs, it’s something that they want. They can afford the wait, the research, and the time to peruse reviews. The urgency at the time of decision is low.
Housing is something that everyone needs, where the supply and the quality are severely limited by wealth and free time.
Since the constrains and urgency at the time of decision tends to be much higher for housing, reviews - as important and as useful as they are - are one of the first things to disappear from the decision process, even when they are available, relevant, and can confidently be verified.
By the time most people have the chance and reason to read them, they’re already in too deep to truly factor them into consideration.
Thank you. This is what I meant.
It’s not that reviews aren’t useful information, it’s that the information is of less precedence to not being homeless and a lot of people simple can’t afford to be choosy (which shitty landlords take advantage of)
This is essentially the same way that my employer sets pay ranges.
They send a list of job titles and descriptions to an outside company along with the number of employees and how much each of those employees are paid. Lots of other employers send their info and the outside company tries to match up all the job descriptions and then sends back to all of the employers what the “market range” is for every job.
My employer then decides where in that range they think is “competitive” (hint: its near the bottom). That’s the amount HR and Finance are willing to approve when hiring someone into a role, regardless of experience. The wages are only “competitive” if every other employer goes along with the scheme and offers the same amount.
My (former) job did that. The firm they hired just flst out omitted every regional job equivalent that paid higher, and kept their scope narrowed to places that paid at least $10k less a year. They then recommended pay cuts everywhere, which mostly amounted to cutting enough labor costs just enough to pay for the contract that did the research.
I took it as a sign to start applying elsewhere: glad I did.
Competitive wages is jargon for “We’ll pay you you the least possible amount of money. It’s competitive for us.”
Edit: Spelling is important.
In the U.S. (not sure if this is elsewhere) you have the work number too. Employers that participate share every pay period and bonis to your record. Then future employers can look up and see exactly how much you were making when they run the background check.
Good for the renters. Hopefully they can win.
Man this seems like a great target for Anonymous to permanently cripple… 🙏🏼
I work in this industry at a decent level with these companies. They regularly try to worm out of contracts, get mixed up in unethical shit, and do things like this. We are literally one step removed from organized crime a lot of the time.
I’m not convinced state housing is the solution, but extensive regulatory oversight is badly needed.
Get Yardi too. Same crap wrapped up in a more terrible software package.
“the software takes empathy out of the equation”
I can’t wait to see how even more callous the software can get when they add “A.I.” to it. Maybe they’ll just cut out the rental office people altogether and all customer service will be with a glorified chat bot.
lol they think empathy was ever in the equation
I have no idea how people can afford to rent. In my general 5 square mile area, there are literally dozens of new apartment complexes, townhomes, and housing developments that are built strictly to rent, and the rent for all of these places range from $1500 for a 2 bedroom apartment to $3000 per month for the townhomes and rental houses. I just don’t understand the system where these people somehow cannot afford to buy a home but are expected to pay more than a mortgage in rent.
Who is living in them? That’s what I am so confused about. Like who can afford it ? Is it people from neighboring towns that are rich enough to get an apartment in town for work like. I just don’t get who is filling all these new places.
Probably not many people long term. When you buy a place to rent it out you need a steady stream of people who want it over the years. Single family homes with 3-4 bedrooms are good for young families.
The problem with lots of these expensive apartment complexes in small towns that can’t support them is: people are not going to be perpetually locked out of houses. Either we will build more houses, build more apartments in better cities, or kids will live with their parents longer.
One of my top priorities for kids I have is housing. College degree? Maybe a state school. But they will definitely need a place to live.
Multiple people living together. I recently went to Washington about an hour north of Seattle at a place I lived at a long time ago. Place was a shithole with plazas boarded up. This was like a decade ago. Went back there this last fall and shitty homes there are like half a million dollars. It took a few days before it clicked at how many fucking cars there were lining up and down all the streets. Even where I visited had like 4 adults; there’s just so many damn people bunking together now even with full time jobs.
Houses and mortgages in my neighborhood aren’t much cheaper for an older house with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. I know owning and a 300/month savings off that higher rent price is not nothing but it’s not the huge savings it was several years ago to instead have a mortgage. That said I’m not sure how anybody is affording anything.
Big landlords use software to scrape rents from all sorts of websites. One site can not be solely blamed. With the data available out there it’s no wonder they’re all aligned
This isn’t a data scraping site. Clients uploaded their rental data to the site directly, and then the site “compares them” and tells the clients what to charge. It also explicitly requires all clients to follow its pricing “recommendations” to maintain those prices.
These landlords outsourced pricing collision to a 3rd party. They formed a monopoly with software and cost their tenats 100s of millions extra in doing so.
I’ve worked within multiple sfr companies over the past 8 years. Including with their product teams building out in house acquisitions and asset management platforms to quickly aggregate comps for rental and sale values. While what you’re saying may be true, there is a lot more beneath the surface. To be clear, institutional single family landlords should be legislated out of existence, but to you and everyone downvoting, you don’t get the big picture here.
Most apartments I’ve rented haven’t had their rent amounts available online.
