Landlords win in a 950,000 college dorm room rental scam
Why are 950,000 college students and other people in major cities paying high rents?
According to the Justice Department, this is because their landlords, apartment management companies, and the software they use operate as a cartel to fix daily rental rates in major cities and at 17 universities.
The major cities are in:
Texas in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston
Florida in Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville.
Georgia in the Atlanta metro area
Arizona in Phoenix
Nevada in Las Vegas
North Carolina, in Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham research triangle
California in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Washington in the Seattle metro area.
New York / New Jersey in the commuter hubs serving NYC
Illinois in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs
Colorado in the Denver metro area
Massachusetts in Boston and its surrounding communities.
The universities are:
Arizona State University
University of Texas at Austin
University of California System at UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside
Florida State University
Drexel University in Philadelphia
Princeton University
University of Kentucky
University of Mississippi (Ole Miss)
Boise State University
Cornell University
University of Maryland
Lehigh University
Pam Bondi, U.S. Attorney General heading the Justice Dept. (DOJ)
Federal court records show criminal co-conspirators settled case after case without:
admitting wrongdoing
going to jail
paying restitution
paying fines and punitive damages.
It is as if the Justice Department is on the side of the wrongdoers rather than the people who were scammed.
Details were released yesterday at 7 a.m. by the Justice Department in this press release:
U.S. and Plaintiff States v. RealPage, Inc.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-realpage-inc
The landlord is Blackstone operating through American Campus Communities (ACC).
They own the most extensive portfolio of student housing in America—950,000 units.
The management companies are:
Livcor LLC, a Blackstone company
Greystone and its student housing division, called EdR (Education Realty Trust)
RealPage
The software companies are:
RealPage Inc.
Yardi Systems
Specific Software Names are:
YieldStar, it uses algorithms to suggest daily rental prices
AI Revenue Management (AIRM)
YieldStar software uses algorithms to suggest daily odd-numbered rental prices.
Artificial Intelligence Revenue Management (AIRM) forecasts demand and sets a single price for all customers, violating antitrust laws.
Instead of criminally prosecuting the landlords, apartment managers, and software companies responsible for the conspiracy and rental cartel under RICO statutes, the Justice Department issued eight press releases linked here:
RICO stands for Racketeering Influenced Conspiracy Organizations.
Details are in this story:
Utah Chief Justice, Gov. sued personally under RICO
The Justice Department has 122, 281 employees.
Its Antitrust Division has less than a dozen attorneys.
Below is an email from Multifamily Dive from this morning at 9:28 a.m.
