Source: Globest —
A group of US senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have sent a letter to the Department of Justice urging an investigation of the role RealPage’s Yieldstar algorithm plays in setting rents.
In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kantor, the senators said “institutional investors and rent-setting algorithms” have been inflating housing prices, the Dallas Morning News reported.
“The rise of institutional investors and rent-setting algorithms have weakened competition in the already strained housing market, resulting in substandard services and unnecessarily high housing costs for American families,” the letter stated.
The senators said “the widespread use of anonymized and aggregated proprietary rental data by the country’s largest landlords could result in defacto price-setting by those companies, driving up prices and hurting renters.”
“Given these findings, the DOJ should closely review rent-setting algorithms like YieldStar to determine if they are having anti-competitive effects on local housing markets that have seen increased institutional investor activity,” the letter concluded.
RealPage did not respond to a request for comment.
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