As rental prices continue to climb, it turns out that a slew of U.S.-based tech firms have been using algorithms to steadily raise the price of rent across the U.S. and Canada.
More than 30 lawsuits have been leveraged against RealPage and Yardi in the U.S., two companies who are allegedly using their databases for “real-time price fixing.”
At the heart of these cases, people are saying that these companies are being used by all the large scale rental agencies so all the prices across buildings match and go up at the same time. On top of that, the increases are more and more outlandish as the algorithm pushes out more and more low income rentals, leaving renters with little choice to move and find a more affordable living arrangement.
Combining this with the removal of rent control on building made after 2018 in Ontario and some agencies have been sending tenets notices asking for rental increase of seven to 14 percent, according to a report from The Globe and Mail. To take this further, the owner of a new apartment complex in Toronto told tenants that the recommendations from YieldStar were actually even higher than the ones he passed down to his tenants.
Source: The Globe and Mail
Image credit: Shutterstock
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