javajaws said:
I think the only way the government has a case here is if the software uses private data from one customer to assist in setting prices for another customer. If instead, it relies only on publicly available data I see no chance the gov wins.
From reading the links above it does kind of sound like they are using both private data from other customers as well as public data so this should make for an interesting court case.
For their customers to willingly share their pricing and occupancy data with other customers via the software I would think a case could be made for collusion of some sort.
On the flip side, such software really has great benefit to the market as a whole as it is clearly pointing out a supply problem in housing in these markets where rates went up when used. In the long term this should help get them more housing built and thus lower monthly prices.
This may indeed be the case. In construction, at least, there are cloud project management and estimating platforms that aggregate user data to establish market averages for pricing, profitability, etc that users can have access to It's all anonymized, obviously, but it does have the effect of combining private data from many sources to drive or at least inform pricing decisions.
If this software works similarly and aggregates private data to establish pricing recommendations, then it is somewhat collusive. While pricing for open housing is advertised, pricing for rent increases in lease renewals is not. Combining private datasets utilizing that information is closer to car dealerships sharing all of their sales information to determine what their competitors are negotiating in terms of sale price, rebates, trade in, etc and not just the publicly started MSRP or sticker price.
