51
Are some rents in Canada part of a price-fixing scheme? (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 1 day ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca
7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Cynthia Black believes her rent has been rigged.

Since 2022, the Toronto resident says she has twice faced annual rent increases of either seven or 11 per cent β€” depending on the lease type her household was offered β€” in two Livmore buildings owned by GWL Realty Advisors, a division of Canada Life.

"The hikes have never made any sense. And when myself and other tenants sat down and asked [GWLRA] to please stop raising rents so high, they told us they use software called YieldStar to help determine our rents," she told CBC's The National.

But in June, she says YieldStar came up again β€” only this time it was in the news, as the FBI was investigating the company that owns it, RealPage, and landlords who use it for alleged collusion, price-fixing and artificially inflating rents across the U.S.

top 7 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago

YieldStar is basically an outsourced price fixing scheme. The app assembles data on average rents in an area from across all the different landlords who use the app, and then recommends the "optimum" price for rentals in the area. "Optimum" of course means "The highest rent this market will bear."

The users will, of course, claim that this isn't collusion because they're not directly communicating with each other, and it's not price fixing because "they're just following the recommendations of the app." The whole thing is just criminal conspiracy outsourced to a third party, and the reality is that it's pretty much impossible to stop stuff like this from happening somehow. This is exactly why aggressive rent controls are essential to protecting renters.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Erm, how's this different than a vendor looking over at the other vendor's prices and setting their own to match? That wouldn't be price fixing. To be clear I am not advocating for the market, rather highlighting this flaw isn't captured by the standard price fixing idea yet it has the same effect. And there isn't a market solution to it, rather as you suggest, intervention is needed.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

That's precisely my point. This is price fixing, very obviously so, but it's almost impossible to actually prevent because at some point as long as people in an industry can share information and have an incentive not to undercut each other, behaviour that is indistinguishable from price fixing - even if it could not legally be defined as such - will inevitably emerge. When I say this is price fixing, that's not a legal judgement, just an observation of what the behaviour clearly is, regardless of how it would be legally defined. If it looks like a duck, etc. I'm going to call it price fixing because that is the ultimate effect that it has.

Hence my point that ultimately the only solution to this is aggressive rent controls.

[-] n3m37h@sh.itjust.works 14 points 23 hours ago

All companies using this shit software should be barred from being landlord and the province should take over

[-] Evkob@lemmy.ca 11 points 23 hours ago

All ~~companies using this shit software~~ should be barred from being landlord and the province should take over

Everything that is necessary for survival (food, water, and shelter at a minimum) should be a public good and not managed by profit-seeking individuals or corporations.

[-] n3m37h@sh.itjust.works 5 points 22 hours ago

Agreed, but we're a long way off, our politicians are still just enriching their friends at the publics expense

[-] undercrust@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

Digital collusion. AI price-fixing.

What Weston did with bread for years, except overt and online.

this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
51 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

7185 readers
219 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Communities

🍁 Meta

πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories

πŸ™οΈ Cities / Local Communities

πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

πŸ’» Universities

πŸ’΅ Finance / Shopping

πŸ—£οΈ Politics

🍁 Social and Culture

Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
otter@lemmy.ca