• bizarroland@fedia.io
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    24 hours ago

    https://truthout.org/articles/real-estate-software-aided-price-fixing-cartel-among-us-property-companies/

    Yeah, apparently, when they are using this real page software, they are able to figure out how much they can charge for an apartment and how many apartments they can leave vacant before dropping their prices, and as long as the software says they’ll make more money doing something one way, then that’s what they’re going to do.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I know they use software to figure out optimal rent, I just wonder how sophisticated the algorithm is. It might just use industry statistics and simple arithmetic to determine how many people will move out if rent is raised a by a certain amount, how much this will increase revenue, and how much the additional vacancies will reduce revenue. Finding the sweet spot wouldn’t be hard at all. But this isn’t worth much unless it also takes into account the costs of vandalism, evicting squatters, and whatever else might be involved.