Landlords and property managers can’t collude on rental pricing. Using new technology to do it doesn’t change that antitrust fundamental. Regardless of the industry you’re in, if your business uses an algorithm to determine prices, a brief filed by the FTC and the Department of Justice offers a helpful guideline for antitrust compliance: your algorithm can’t do anything that would be illegal if done by a real person.
If they can show collusion amongst landlords in the form of them all agreeing to use software like rentmaximizer, yes. But if individual landlords see an ad for rentmaximizer, or even hear about it through word of mouth, and decide to use it on their own, not via a shared agreement with other landlords, then it’s not collusion.
If they can show collusion amongst landlords in the form of them all agreeing to use software like rentmaximizer, yes. But if individual landlords see an ad for rentmaximizer, or even hear about it through word of mouth, and decide to use it on their own, not via a shared agreement with other landlords, then it’s not collusion.