The only solution is to ban the Internet, or at the very least, prohibit landlords from using it to collect and collate data of any sort. Which means that they can't be allowed to use spreadsheets either. Or telephones, because that could also result in collusion.
Meanwhile, back in the world of housing construction suppression the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts upheld the MBTA Communities Act which in theory is a win for housing multifamily housing in the Greater Boston area. However, the ruling also requires the Legislature to re-write the guidelines that towns have to follow. The actual result of this will be another regulatory slow-walk that will probably result in more poison pills in local zoning ordinances that will prevent any meaningful development in rich towns.
I think that what the activists and politicians are doing is more specifically scapegoating real page for a shift in market information structure. Real page is a great example of how landlords now have access to much better market price information and an unmeasurable part of the increase in excess rents is based on that improved information as rent information moved from classifieds to Craigslist to Zillow/apartments.com to real page. Meanwhile it’s also the boomer/silent generation of landlords and property managers who have been retiring/selling and are being replaced by more finance minded landlords who take more risk to maximize rent collected.
A lot of the naturally occurring affordable housing is what filtered down while being owned by small landlords and when they sell it’s going to people/firms who are going to renovate it back up at least to the market median and some of them will be using real page to make those determinations. Its pretty easy to walk around a block by me and identify what has filtered down, what’s was turned into a median condo, what’s been renovated back to close to the top of the market and whats had a bad job done renovating and is going to cycle through renters who realize they overpaid every year and the landlord is fine with that business model.
I downloaded the Zillow data a while back, but can't bring myself to dig into it because I have a hard time believing an average rent number is representative. Do you have insight into what the distribution of values and weight of them is, or other sources of data that could be used to augment Zillow's data?
That is a problem sometimes. I think the CEA followed individual properties and tracked how rents changed on properties with the algorithm. I think they built their numbers from the ground up.
Along these lines, I'm finishing up a paper right now where I show that value weighted averages and equally weighted averages end up with very different estimates of prices and price changes in recent decades.
Here, the total effect of RealPage is so insignificant, I think it's not such an important issue. RealPage just doesn't amount to anything, regardless of how we measure it.
The only solution is to ban the Internet, or at the very least, prohibit landlords from using it to collect and collate data of any sort. Which means that they can't be allowed to use spreadsheets either. Or telephones, because that could also result in collusion.
Meanwhile, back in the world of housing construction suppression the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts upheld the MBTA Communities Act which in theory is a win for housing multifamily housing in the Greater Boston area. However, the ruling also requires the Legislature to re-write the guidelines that towns have to follow. The actual result of this will be another regulatory slow-walk that will probably result in more poison pills in local zoning ordinances that will prevent any meaningful development in rich towns.
The NFL coach who concluded a 3-14 season: "You know, a lot of referee calls went against us."
Perhaps the ref calls did go against the coach, and perhaps some landlords are colluding on rents.
I think that what the activists and politicians are doing is more specifically scapegoating real page for a shift in market information structure. Real page is a great example of how landlords now have access to much better market price information and an unmeasurable part of the increase in excess rents is based on that improved information as rent information moved from classifieds to Craigslist to Zillow/apartments.com to real page. Meanwhile it’s also the boomer/silent generation of landlords and property managers who have been retiring/selling and are being replaced by more finance minded landlords who take more risk to maximize rent collected.
A lot of the naturally occurring affordable housing is what filtered down while being owned by small landlords and when they sell it’s going to people/firms who are going to renovate it back up at least to the market median and some of them will be using real page to make those determinations. Its pretty easy to walk around a block by me and identify what has filtered down, what’s was turned into a median condo, what’s been renovated back to close to the top of the market and whats had a bad job done renovating and is going to cycle through renters who realize they overpaid every year and the landlord is fine with that business model.
Excellent points.
I downloaded the Zillow data a while back, but can't bring myself to dig into it because I have a hard time believing an average rent number is representative. Do you have insight into what the distribution of values and weight of them is, or other sources of data that could be used to augment Zillow's data?
That is a problem sometimes. I think the CEA followed individual properties and tracked how rents changed on properties with the algorithm. I think they built their numbers from the ground up.
Along these lines, I'm finishing up a paper right now where I show that value weighted averages and equally weighted averages end up with very different estimates of prices and price changes in recent decades.
Here, the total effect of RealPage is so insignificant, I think it's not such an important issue. RealPage just doesn't amount to anything, regardless of how we measure it.
thanks for your reply! I'll go that direction.