Realpage continues Berkeley on the rent price adjustment software

Real estate software company Realpage announced on Wednesday that it was continuing Berkeley on the prohibition recently adopted by the City on rental prices fixing software, which, according to tenants’ defenders, allows owners to end to increase rents.

This decision comes as the company faces many anti-competition proceedings brought by tenants and prohibitions by other cities, as well as an antitrust trial of the United States Ministry of Justice for the concerns that it has facilitated a prices fixing program.

The trial can also serve as a warning to other cities that weigh the prohibitions, in particular San Jose, that the company is ready to repel laws which threaten its business model.

Realpage customers are owners, who share their rental data with the company. Realpage aggregates and analyzes the shared data of its customers, then use it to recommend if the owners should increase or reduce their rental prices, or leave vacant units to attract tenants who could pay more if they rent on a later date.

Realpage rejects the assertions that it is involved in pricing. The company says that its price recommendations are based on “rent data accessible to the public” and that the software is designed to be “legally compliant”.

His trial against Berkeley, filed with the Federal Court of the Northern District of California, requires that the judge would file an injunction which would prevent the city’s order from entering into force.

Although several cities have adopted similar prohibitions – notably San Francisco, Philadelphia and Minneapolis – Berkeley is the first to face a lawsuit.

Realpage’s foreign council, Stephen Weissman, argued that Berkeley’s order is unconstitutional, because it violates the first amendment by prohibiting business law with a legal discourse.

“This order prohibits speech in the form of realpage advice and recommendations to its customers,” Weissman said during a press call on Wednesday morning.

But it is not clear if a judge will buy the argument of the “freedom of expression” of the company – in particular in the city known as the birthplace of the movement of freedom of expression.

“There is no defense of the first amendment to the price fixing allegations,” said David Meyer, a lawyer based in Washington, specializing in antitrust affairs. “The offense itself is not the content of the discourse-it is the underlying implications of this discourse, which is the manipulation of the competitive process by which market prices are determined.”

The company also affirms that Berkeley’s order is based on “false allegations” on its software and that the company was not consulted by the city before the council vote on March 12.

“We had no opportunity to participate, to present facts,” said Weissman. “That, I think, illustrates the bad nature at the head of this order.”

A spokesperson for Berkeley said that in the middle of the morning on Wednesday, they had not yet been served with the trial.

The cost of housing has become a major problem for the cities of the bay region, and the prohibitions reflect a movement, widely led by progressive democrats, to regulate the owners who have benefited from the affordability crisis. But Realpage says that the blame is moved.

“Municipalities … are particularly eager to find a scapegoat for their own hand in the stack of the housing supply,” says the Realpage trial.

Subsessation is largely considered to be the main engine of high housing prices – and Berkeley has certainly limited its offer. Thanks to most of the years 2010, the elected officials of Berkeley were largely skeptical about the role of the construction of new housing in the resolution of the city’s affordability of the city, by applying expensive restrictions on new housing complexes which, according to developers, make projects impossible and voting several dense housing projects.

But that has changed. Many leaders of Berkeley have lined up on the pro-logging movement, including the former mayor Jesse Arreguin, now a legislative state,, And the current mayor Adena Ishii, who took office in January.

Even if Berkeley has made it possible to build more housing in the past five years, he has also strengthened protections for tenants. In November, for example, voters adopted the measure of BB, which forces owners to negotiate with unionized tenants and gave tenants more important protections against expulsions.