[ordinaryradical]

Why does the company get to keep on existing? Why are its owners not financially annihilated (as in, all their assets seized, etc.)?

It seems to me that if the end result of exploiting a million families/individuals for cartel rents is you get told, “Don’t do it again,” but no one who did it suffers any consequences… this is going to keep happening.

The participants in this scheme should be facing jail time and a financial reset. Oppression of the vulnerable should blow up underneath any who try it. Otherwise this country is going to explode.

[guywithahat]

Why is this an issue? They had a legitimate technical challenge (pricing 950k unique apartments in varying markets), and so they brought in an outside company. This was so successful everyone stated using them. The justice department then asked greystar, among others, if they could stop using RealPage, and they agreed. There wasn't a conviction as this is a proposed settlement, and there's no reason to break the company up because it looks like everyone is getting what they wanted.

[more_corn]

Why would they be punished for engaging in monopolistic price fixing that ruined the lives of many of our most vulnerable and served to significantly increase homelessness? Gosh, I dunno.

[guywithahat]

At the end of the day they can only charge market prices, and the market prices are much more related to the city government than the agency. Greystar has tons of affordable units in [Houston](https://www.houstonhouseapts.com/floor-plans/#/), where there is no city zoning and construction is encouraged

[gh02t]

The assertion is that Greystar participated in manipulation of market prices via illegal collusion between nominal competitors. As in, they participated in illegal data sharing between landlords, facilitated by RealPage, that allowed landlords to knowingly and systematically raise prices everywhere within a given market in an anti-competitive fashion. Zoning laws and the availability of subjectively affordable housing in any particular market is irrelevant, especially since housing is a somewhat captive market and there are very high barriers to leaving and seeking a better price in a different location.

Edit: Plus, this only applies to markets where enough renters were participating to make price fixing viable. No idea if Houston is one of them, maybe it is maybe it isn't.

[superxpro12]

This strikes me as an example of a company looking for any way to exploit a monopoly.

[superxpro12]

For further reading: John Oliver just did an episode on "deferred prosecution agreements" which is basically just legalized bribery at this point. It all sucks.