San Francisco targets "price-fixing" rent-setting software

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors became the first major municipality to vote against landlords’ use of “price-gouging software,” including the popular platform RealPage, which is already facing sprawling antitrust lawsuits backed by the Department of Justice. “Efforts to fight collusion are even more critical given private equity-backed consolidation among landlords and property management companies.” Rental management companies have shot back at accusations of price gouging, including RealPage, which denied allegations and claimed it only controlled 10% of the San Francisco rental market. “While we share the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ goal of helping renters, this ordinance will do nothing to make housing more affordable in the city,” RealPage spokesperson Jennifer Bowcock told Bloomberg. The city, one of countless in the country in the grips of a historic housing affordability crisis, has missed key housing construction goals set by the state of California to combat shortages that drive cost surges, prompting the state’s controversial “builder’s remedy” to go into effect last month.